Time Crystal 2: Delsaron's World

By Ethan Somerville and Max Kenny

On their return trip to Eridon, Heathcliff and his five half-caste friends fall through a mysterious wormhole and land on an alternate Earth where the Nazis achieved world domination.

Separated by misfortune, Heath and Con are sent to a forced-labour camp while Kirsty and Katarine end up specimens in a genetic laboratory. Only Aidan and Charlotte manage to flee into a grim fascist world, where they encounter rebel outcasts condemned to death by their own impure genes.

While helping the rebels plan a glorious revolution, Aidan and Charlotte are reunited with Heath, Con and an American Airman named John Land. With their superior psychic powers, Heath and his friends assume it will be easy to help the rebels overthrow their evil oppressors.

But the mysterious Great Leader has dark powers of his own, numerous machines to aid him, and his own army of genetically modified clones at his beck and call. He even has a trans-dimensional gate-machine that he uses to pirate alien technology from other dimensions...

Also Available in the Eridon Chronicles:
Half-caste
Time Crystal 1 - The Convergence
Time Crystal 3 - The Icosahedron
Time Crystal 4 - The Singularity

• Language: English
• Publisher: Storm Publishing
• Release date: Oct 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301950201

Ethan Somerville

Ethan Somerville is a prolific Australian author with over 20 books published, and many more to come. These novels cover many different genres, including romance, historical, children's and young adult fiction. However Ethan's favourite genres have always been science fiction and fantasy. Ethan has also collaborated with other Australian authors and artists, including Max Kenny, Emma Daniels, Anthony Newton, Colin Forest, Tanya Nicholls and Carter Rydyr.

Book preview

The Eridon Chronicles Book 3

TIME CRYSTAL 2

Delsaron’s World

By

Ethan Somerville

and

Max Kenny

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Storm Publishing on Smashwords

Time Crystal 2 – Delsaron’s World

Copyright © 2010/2017 by Ethan Somerville and Max Kenny

www.stormpublishing.net

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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* * * *

Chapter 1

The Cat who walks by Himself

The Leader’s vast, subterranean complex was now the only place on Earth in which he felt at peace. Separated from the mindless babble above by thirty metres of reinforced concrete, his private rooms provided him with the silent sanctuary he was experiencing an increasing need for.

Only here, away from the excruciating responsibilities demanded of him, could he begin to relax. Only here could he focus his tangled thoughts on his reason for living and commune with his Lord.

He sighed heavily, a mixture of fatigue and relief, as the lift’s thick metal doors hissed apart to reveal a long corridor decorated with indoor climbing plants and priceless paintings. A moody seascape complete with lightning-shot sky and white-capped waves hung opposite the gruesome Francisco Goya epic; Saturn devouring his sons. Other paintings depicted violent scenes of battle and revolution, complete with broken bodies, severed heads impaled on pikes, flashing swords and crumbling castle walls. Hanging above a pair of double doors facing the elevator was an apocalyptic vision of swirling chaos engulfing a dying sun, superimposed over a hideous face shrieking with hysterical laughter. The order of the paintings seemed to tell a fateful story of triumphant chaos and destruction leading to inevitable Armageddon.

As the cloaked and hooded Leader’s eyes followed the sequence he’d created, he folded his hands and smiled without humour. Someday when I am free, he whispered, his voice deep and husky, Then you too shall be ... Father.

Unable to bear the swell of emotion and unwanted memories any longer, he spun and pressed his hand against a glowing panel beside a side door. Only one could make his agony recede now. With a click the door slid aside, allowing him to step through into the room beyond. Eerie blue lights flared into life, activated by a touchpad beneath the rich dark carpet. The Leader paused in his flight only to remove his cloak and toss it over a coat-stand already draped with other articles of clothing. Beneath he wore a long robe of black velvet hemmed with gold symbols.

Not even his mindless personal servants were allowed into his meditation chamber. It was a large, circular room with a smooth, bluish-white dome of a ceiling mostly obscured behind towering bookshelves and exotic indoor climbing plants. The door hissed closed behind him. Finally, completely divorced from the world he had grown to hate, the Leader strode to the middle of the room where a low wooden platform had been erected, the silky folds of robe whispering around his ankles.

An inverted, blood-red pentagram had been painted on the dais, its two upward points breeching a small wooden rack containing a leather tourniquet, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a box of cotton balls, a handful of syringes, and a number of cloudy vials, most of them empty. With another sigh of relief, the Leader stepped into the middle of the pentagram and sat down cross-legged, reaching for a syringe and one of the few vials still containing a viscous, dark blue liquid. With trembling fingers he uncapped the tube and plunged the needle inside, carefully drawing up the precious fluid. When I return I had better mix up another batch, he thought, nervously eyeing the empty phials. I do not want to be caught short... He shivered. The thought of coming down here, tense, tired, in need of a fix - and there being no diluted sarash left, filled him with dread.

Gently laying the full syringe aside, the Leader rolled up his right sleeve, fastened the tourniquet around his bulging biceps and swabbed the area with alcohol, bringing veins to the surface. Then he scooped up his needle and with no thoughts of pain, only of freedom, plunged it into his forearm. He yanked the tourniquet free as the opaque liquid surged into his bloodstream, filling his veins with ecstatic fire. He arched his back, a husky gasp of pleasure escaping his lips, and the universe yielded before him.

He soared into the star-studded abyss, free at last from the heavy shackles that bound him to the Earth. Space spun around him as he screamed with joy, spread his ethereal arms - and dived for the nearest break; a jagged, bleeding slash across the Mother Universe’s smooth black belly. He could see his Master’s domain waiting beyond, with open arms.

Oh Father - I’m coming!

When he finally awoke, he found himself sprawled on his back, his expensive robes clinging to his sweat-soaked body. Slowly he sat up, temples pounding in the wake of the powerful experience. If only it would last forever, he thought as he massaged his scarred forehead. If only I didn’t have to return to this Hell...

No. He shook his head to rid it of the insidious thought that had just crept into it. Not yet. Not when there was still hope ... slim hope...

The one hundred percent pure sarash he had down in his lab would have to wait until even that was gone.

And then - he smiled thinly, wickedly - Götterdämmerung and the ultimate freedom.

He climbed to his feet and smoothed his rumpled gown, catching a brief glimpse of his watch. It read 19:45. The Gate Machine had had more than enough time to cool down. It was time to try again. Maybe this time he would acquire something of value.

As the Leader left his meditation chamber his only true friend emerged from the laboratory, her small white paws moving soundlessly across the plush carpet.

Oh Nyona! The dropped to his haunches so he could stroke the little ginger cat’s striped back. Of the cold chunk of ice his heart had become during his imprisonment, one tiny spark of warmth remained for the animals that made his solitude more bearable. Like him these creatures walked alone, depending on no-one but themselves. An old piece of writing popped into his mind, its author lost somewhere in the dusty annals of his fragmented memory. ‘I am the cat who walks by himself and all places are alike to me’ ... Alike indeed. The Leader lifted his head, looking inward, his mind travelling back years - no, centuries. He had forgotten so much, but he still remembered cats from his past, especially a great tiger named Suresh, coloured very much like Nyona, He had been someone’s companion – he couldn’t remember whose - but he had developed an instant affinity with the feline, and was able to telepathically communicate with him. He recalled walking with this tiger – for some reason he remembered it had had six fully-functioning legs – and experiencing the world through its senses.

I love you, Nyona, he whispered to the sleek cat rubbing herself against his legs. She purred delightfully as he scratched between her small, pointed ears. Realising that he still had a lot to do before the next day, he straightened and bade a regretful farewell. The Gate beckoned.

The room at the end of the corridor, the one with the End of the Universe above its doors, opened out on a Frankensteinian laboratory almost as large as a football field. Touch-controlled fluoroes winked on as the robed Leader descended via flimsy aluminium stairs into a nightmarish maze of junkyard machines, terminals, thick support columns, bulging filing cabinets, frosted glass partitions, stained lab benches and racks laden with row upon row of neatly labelled bottles. The hundreds of contraptions he’d created in the hope they would help him attain physical freedom hummed, pounded and throbbed, grinding out his ceaseless orders, each an artwork of metal panels, buttons, LCDs and trailing wires. All were controlled by a massive super computer, the central brain of a gigantic network that encircled the globe.

But first prize went to the awesome, ceiling-high structure hulking against the left-hand wall, separated from all the others by a broad expanse of grease-stained concrete. Connected to a nearby computer terminal by a tangle of taped-down wires, this huge, Gothic contraption, only metal panels, insulated induction coils and two large crystal plates actually visible, was the Leader’s pride and joy. Its technical name was the Fifth Dimensional Transportation Unit, but the Leader, like his much-beloved ancestors, simply called it the Gate Machine.

Drying his sweaty palms on his robes, the Leader turned to the large, three-sided computer console, pulled a lever and pushed three switches to maximum. A deep, throbbing hum started. As it rose in pitch the fluoroes flickered and died, the Gate Machine needing all the power provided by the lab’s private fusion reactor. The contraption’s metal coils and crystal panels began to glow a dull red as the pulsing hum graduated to a siren’s scream. The Leader cringed, still unused to sounds of such high pitch. An old-fashioned monitor set into the makeshift computer console flashed a maximum power achieved message, and then a savage spark slashed down from the upper crystal plate and blasted the darkness away. Facing his terminal the Leader started tapping feverishly on its primitive QWERTY keyboard, using only his index fingers.

DIMENSIONAL TUNNEL TO PARALLEL REALM CREATED, the computer-screen informed him.

Excellent. The Leader initiated a program and stepped back as the random energy discharges started to form themselves into something more definite; a squirming, crackling ellipse anchored to the upper and lower crystal plates. It enclosed an area of writhing psychedelic colours, too sickeningly bright to be real. Yet they were more real than he. They were the pulsing lights of the hyper-dimensions; the uncharted realms separating universes.

That much he knew. How to control exactly where the dimensional rip appeared, and what it actually ended up sucking into its inescapable maw were beyond him. Although he had, after several spectacular failures, managed to program the Gate Machine’s computer to open holes in timezones more advanced than his own, and to home in only on machines, the crude contraption often malfunctioned, delivering old WWII fighter planes, still containing befuddled pilots, bewildered bovine animals, and once - an entire crew-load of unconscious sailors from a ship called the Marie Celeste. So there was always a chance he would finish up with something completely useless.

Please Father, he prayed as the computer scanned the realm past the psychedelic blur, send me something that will help me to escape ... like a spaceship!

SUITABLE SUBJECT FOUND. INSTIGATE TRANSFER? the monitor asked.

Yes. Still holding his breath, the Leader typed in his reply. Something large and blocky started to take shape inside the crackling circumference. Sparks danced restlessly across its indistinct surface.

Lord, the Leader clasped his pale, bony hands together, please ... I beg of you...

The mysterious object started to assume a definite shape - then a warning message slashed across the computer screen:

INDUCTION COILS OVERHEATING - SIXTY SECONDS UNTIL ALL SAFETY LIMITS ARE EXCEEDED. SHUTTING DOWN. SUGGEST THIRTY-SIX HOUR MINIMUM REST PERIOD.

Too soon! Sweating, the Leader watched all the switches drop back into their original positions. The flickering circle of light dispersed into the atmosphere, plunging the laboratory into temporary darkness. As he jumped down from the terminal and started blindly across the floor, hands outstretched, the fluoroes sprang on to illuminate his latest prize. It stood on the lower crystal plate, steam rising lazily from its ice-caked surface; a battered delivery van from the late twentieth century. It had one cracked headlight, a filthy windscreen, and the bold proclamation; TIME-STREAM COURIERS - WE GET IT THERE BEFORE IT LEAVES, written in large, garish letters on the side. Someone had scrawled CAUTION: SEEDS PLANTED and PLEASE WASH ME in the grime beneath.

The Leader’s thin lips crept back from his teeth in anger. No! he gasped, clenching his hands into white-knuckled fists. No! Hurling abuse at his now-silent computer he stormed from the area.

* * * *

Chapter 2

The Great Cosmic Toilet

Well, said Con Hatsopopoulos to no-one in particular, "now we’ve got the rock we can start the roll! Eridon here we come! Prepare to meet Con Hatso the half-caste! And if any of youse calls me Con Hatso the Fatso I’ll thump ya flatso!"

He performed an ungraceful pirouette, the tattered tails of his flannelette shirt flying out behind him, and almost tripped over one of his sneaker-laces. His well-used Walkman dropped from his metal-studded belt but he managed to catch it before it could smash on the floor. Yeah! he finished for good measure. Grinning, he flopped down beside Charlotte Kingsley, a pretty, fair-skinned redhead dressed in a high-waisted Regency frock. She smiled back, displaying a row of white teeth.

Yes, she agreed, picking up a schooner. I’m certainly glad all that’s over! She drained the last of her prefabricated beer and daintily wiped her lips on a lacy handkerchief. Maybe now we can relax a little.

Relax, Charlotte? asked Aidan Thomas, a lean, Mephistophelian individual seated opposite with his fingers laced together behind his head. What doth it mean ‘to relax’?

Aye, queried Kirsty McDonald, the little yellow-haired girl in the white satin dress seated beside Aidan. Her innocent blue eyes were round with none of her eighteenth century lover’s facetiousness, only incomprehension.

I’ve been afeard for my life for so long I’ve forgotten what peace is! Aidan continued as though the baby-faced blonde hadn’t spoken.

The last member of the odd little group of time-travellers, Katarine of Carcassonne, agreed by nodding and making a guttural noise in the back of her throat. Her long, copper-coloured bangs swung around her serene features. She was a tall, willowy girl clad in an electric-blue mini-dress.

Charlotte smiled again, somewhat ruefully. I guess we’re all in the same boat – or rather, timeship!

We shall never rediscover peace and quiet, Aidan began, rising to his full height of one hundred and ninety centimetres and straightening the leather baldric he wore over his black velvet coat, knowing Heath and how much the Gods of Trouble love him!

Everyone agreed with that!

I really don’t care what happens when we land, just so long as I can get some new batteries for this thing. Con shook his battered Walkman. A Meat Loaf tape rattled. No idea how much longer these are gonna last!

What is that strange contraption? Aidan pointed a long bony finger. I recall a brat in that noisy Scottish eating house carrying such a one. But all it did was make him twitch in a most alarming way.

Con’s bushy eyebrows lifted. ‘Scottish eating house’? He was still unused to the eighteenth century pirate’s quaint speech inflexions.

Aidan leaned forward, deep-set, coal-black eyes focusing on a point several inches behind Con’s own. The Greek boy cringed. McDonald’s, Aidan enunciated in smart parent to dumb child voice.

Con exploded with laughter. "Oh, that Scottish eating house!"

Aidan sat back, folding his arms. Aye. Now mind telling me what that strange device actually does?

Con got to his feet, a wicked grin playing across his lips. Sure, Aids. Put these over your ears. He handed over the headset.

Dubiously Aidan took it. Why?

Con’s smile was angelic. Oh man, he thought, you are gonna love Sailor to a Siren! Trust me.

Something inside Aidan told him not to, but his disobeyed the irrational sensation, thinking that if a mere child could wear such a contraption without ill effect, then so could he - a very well-travelled adult of thirty-three years! Now what? The furry things felt strange covering his ears.

Visibly straining to hold in his laughter, Con pushed in a button and thrust a tiny knob to its limit.

Inhuman shrieks exploded inside Aidan’s head. He screamed and clapped his hands to his ears, pressing the phones even closer to his skull. The demonic row intensified. For a few seconds Aidan thought that his madness had returned and all the fiendish denizens of Hell were after him. Then he finally realised what was causing the infernal noise and yanked the headset from his ears. He leapt to his feet and advanced, black-faced, on the hysterical youth. He had never liked being the butt of practical jokes!

To make matters worse, the three girls were also laughing, Charlotte kicking her legs and smacking the arm of her chair. The brat tried to liquefy his brains with devilish howls and all they could do was laugh?!

Oh, very funny! Aidan grabbed Con by the well-used collar of his ratty shirt and with very little effort lifted him off his feet. Well, I think ‘twould be very funny if I inverted your face! It only took Aidan half a second to cross the Lounge and slam the struggling Greek into a glowing wall.

Aidan! Charlotte screamed, jumping to her feet. No!

Hey man- Con wheezed, wriggling ineffectually against the lean sailor. Christ, how could someone so skinny be so damn strong?! Can’tcha take a little joke?!

Don’t hurt him! Charlotte grabbed Aidan’s shoulders.

Somehow the redhead’s high-pitched voice managed to worm through Aidan’s fury, reaching a deeply-buried seed of compassion planted there by a tiny ash-blonde named Catriona Neville - the only woman he had ever loved. Grudgingly he released the lad and turned away, still fuming at his open display of helplessness in the face of modern technology. Hell, Con was only having a little joke - that was no reason to attack him so viciously! Slowly his anger ebbed. Realising how stupid he had been, he helped the wheezing boy to his feet. He swallowed nervously, preparing to say two words that had never come easily to him. Forgive me.

Hey, no problem, man, Can gasped as he straightened his shirt. If some bastard turned Meat Loaf up to brain-melt level on me I’d want to bash his face in, too. He grinned. But this thing’s harmless, honest! All it does is play music!

Aidan’s bushy eyebrows lifted. Music?

What you heard was twentieth century music - loud twentieth century music.

Those demonic howls from Hell?

Grinning, Con tried to slip the ‘phones back around Aidan’s head. I’ll turn it down, he promised.

Over my dead body! Aidan pushed them away.

Con sighed. I guess some of us just weren’t made for rock ‘n’ roll.

He and Aidan returned to the corner of comfortable chairs and lounges to wait for Heath to come back in and tell them that they’d arrived on his home world of Eridon.

Had they not shared the same memories, each would have thought the past few days a bizarre dream. They had all been scooped out of their respective timezones by a handsome young alien who needed their help to track down a mysterious crystal with the power to transform men into gods. Then Heath had whisked them across the city of Sydney in a dangerous search for the gem, and told that they were themselves Human/Eridon half-castes, beings with genes from his own planet. Finally they fought Jason Stephens, a Kings Cross bouncer who had risen to become one of the aforementioned gods. None of the half-castes could recall that terrible battle on the docks of Miller’s Point without shivering and fighting off memories of near-defeat. All had watched Heath crumple beneath the psychic blasts of the enraged bouncer, and four of them had witnessed Aidan scoop up the Crystal - scream his bestial triumph - and become linked to it in the same, almost irreparable way Jason had. Only the lightning reaction of the ship’s computer, Rhys, and the mentalist abilities of the young Eridon, had saved the pirate’s sanity.

I wonder what Rhys wanted? Con asked in the middle of a yawn.

Heath certainly is taking a while. Charlotte studied the ornate eighteenth-century watch she wore on a gold chain around her slender neck. It’s been over an hour since he left.

Doth time have any meaning when we be travelling through it? Aidan mused, scratching the side of his long, beaky nose.

Jesus Aids, it’s too early in the morning for thoughts like that! Con cried.

Or mayhap too late at night.

Con swore and dropped his head into his hands.

Suddenly the gentle golden glow emanating from the Lounge’s walls began to fade, the accompanying background hum also decreasing in pitch. Con sprang to his feet in alarm. The lights and noise never faded, not even when the ship was at rest. Rhys! he shouted at the ceiling. What’s going on?

The controlling machine didn’t answer.

Come on! Con started from the room, the others following at his heels. Like the Lounge the hall was also darkening; Heath’s expensive prints had already dissolved into indistinct oblongs, all colour gone.

It seemed as though the ship was slowly dying around them.

What’s wrong, Rhys? Heath asked as he walked into the control room. The delicately handsome youth only looked nineteen Earth years even though he was actually much older. He stopped in the middle of the room, surrounded by the many complex machines that made up Rhys, their warning lights resembling baleful eyes in the eerie green chromic crystal light. During the course of the mission Heath had come to realise that despite the computer’s appearance he was a living, thinking being with emotions, concerns, desires - and one very serious psychological problem.

Because of interference with his programming by the Chief Time-Controller, Adelrid Merylon, Rhys was suffering from an AI version of Multiple Personality Disorder. His original persona, that of the easy-going Computer Doctor, Rhys Kelly, was slowly being undermined by the growth of an unstable copy of the Time-Controller’s. Because the two personalities were total opposites; one a happy-go-lucky philanthropist and the other a narrow-minded megalomaniac, there was little chance of them ever sorting out their differences and reintegrating. The young Eridon was an innocent caught in the middle of a dangerous struggle for control between two opposing intelligences. As his computer skills were only above average, and he had little knowledge about AI construction, all he could do was pray that they got back to Eridon before Adelrid’s insane persona could take over.

As the young man waited for an answer the walls darkened, their greenish hue intensifying. He gulped, wiping his perspiring hands dry on his loose white shirt.

Space ... time anomaly... Rhys said, his voice a drawn-out slur. Pulling ... us ... towards it...

Spacetime anomaly? Heath’s long legs carried him across the room and up onto the raised platform at its far end. Here squatted the timeline generator; a huge, three-sided console above which hung a holographic 3D monitor. Disembodied fragments of light and colour twisted in and out of reality inside it. What d’you mean?

Time ... hole...

No, answered another voice, suffering from none of previous one’s lack of power. Blood-coloured fingers began to creep across the walls. Time-bubble! The new tones lifted, quivering with triumph. The time-bubble you created, Heath, is coming to claim you and the multiverse you destroyed with your meddling!

Adelrid - let Rhys finish! Heath shouted, sagging against the metal railing behind him and mopping his brow on his shirt-sleeve.

As you wish, young master, Adelrid resonated, his voice laced with an incurable smugness, "but let me warn you - it will not be long before he is finished - permanently."

The red colour faded as Adelrid laughed, leaving only the sickly green shade behind. Heath shook his honey-brown locks back over his shoulders and straightened up. What else is going to go wrong, Lord, he asked his omnipotent Creator.

A time-hole... Rhys’s dragging tones slowly increased in speed, has opened directly in front of us.

Heath’s emerald green eyes widened in horror. You mean one of those naked singularity spacetime rip thingies that only form once every billion years or so?

‘Fraid so. In fact it’s so close to us that there’s very little I can do very little to drag us from its gravity.

By the Holy Blood of Eridos! Heath shouted. There must be something! Who knows where we’ll end up if we fly through that thing! Who knows if we’ll even survive the journey? He punched his thighs in frustration. On the other side of that dimensional hole could be anything - an unknown universe - the empty eternity of a long-dead realm - the stinking Pit of Hell itself... Dosta, I’d rather die! He trembled. The chances of ever returning home after falling through a naked singularity were so tiny they weren’t worth contemplating. Adelrid might as well have taken over already!

I can try, Rhys sighed, but I don’t like my chances only on percentage power.

Percentage power?

Adelrid is draining almost half of my energy ... right now I don’t even have enough to break out of this particular spacetime.

Sweating, Heath snatched at straws. Adelrid - can’t you cooperate with Rhys for once? His voice rose in frightened anger. Six lives are at stake here!

The bloody shade returned, plunging the room into an angry, fiery hell. Why should I help you, Heath? Adelrid’s high-pitched voice seemed to shake the entire room. You who created the destruction you- He faltered, as though his voice was cracking with emotion, -and the entire multiverse are heading towards? Death is too good for you!

K’fia Dosta! Heath slammed a fist down on the centre console as Adelrid’s colour vanished.

Ten out of ten for effort, Heath, Rhys slurred.

"He doesn’t even care!" the youth wailed.

"As far as he’s concerned, the multiverse - his mother - is dead."

But that’s not a time-bubble! It’s a naked singularity - a spacetime-rip - a hole between dimensions! Heath clapped both hands to his pale cheeks. And he calls himself an astrophysicist? He turned away, shoulders slumping in defeat. Kamrys’s Death!

There is one thing you can do, Rhys said softly.

Heath’s head snapped up. What? The spacetime rip was drawing steadily nearer.

The computer paused, seeming to take a deep breath. You threatened to do it to me once, before you realised it was Adelrid who was making me disagreeable. You have to shut down my - shut down myyyy- He broke off, as though choking. The bloody shade started to creep back into the walls. Persss-

"The time has come, Rhys!" Adelrid shrieked.

Perss-

The walls started to flicker between sickly green and violent red. Heath stepped back in horror.

There is no escape! She dies and so must we!

Rhys’s voice emerged as an agonised squeak. Person-

Person ... Person- A terrifying scream filled Heath’s ears and mind as realised what Rhys had been trying to say.

Yes! The young man sprang forward, grabbing for the mindlink between himself and the machine. He locked his fingers around the control just as its defence mechanism activated. Sizzling tendrils of energy leapt from the console and wrapped around his forearms. He howled in agony, arching his back.

"No!" Adelrid screamed.

He couldn’t give up now! Gritting his teeth, Heath closed his eyes and forced himself past the pins-and-needles creeping up his arms and into his chest. He knew he couldn’t accomplish what he wanted at the menu level, so he dived deep into the dark bowels of the computer’s mind. He mightn’t have been a computer doctor of Rhys Kelly’s magnitude, but he could still give the random machine a good, swift kick up its cybernetic backside.

His consciousness appeared inside, surrounded by hexagonal machine-cells and more snapping whips of hostile energy. Using his mentalist abilities to dodge the angry discharges, Heath sped through the AI’s complex biotronic matrix, his destination clearly mapped out beneath him.

Normally the Eridon’s task was a routine one, taking only a second to execute. But Adelrid was fighting him at every turn and almost a whole minute passed, of running, hiding and dodging the evil persona’s cosmic-energy anger, before he reached the release mechanism. In machine-time, a minute was almost an eternity. Fatigued, Heath locked his will around the switch-

No!

Still clutching the mindlink in his pale, trembling hands, Heath screamed, his entire body wrapped in a blinding web of energy. Lights exploded behind his eyes as the biotronic matrix started lurching towards darkness. Must release, the young man thought feverishly, straining to control his sliding consciousness. If I don’t my mind will be trapped inside this damn computer forever...

Sweat beaded on his upper lip as he focussed his will.

NOOOOOO-

Click.

At first Heath thought he’d failed, and the thunderous silence that descended all around him was his eternal imprisonment. But then he realised he could still move. Around him lay hundreds of lifeless circuit panels and machine cells, devoid of the insane program’s retributive anger.

He had succeeded; deactivated the personality program, effectively shutting down Adelrid ... and Rhys. No longer possessing a mind of its own, the ship would have to be piloted manually.

Gasping, Heath leapt back into to his body. More pins and needles stabbed into his extremities, phantom echoes of those that had accosted him before, but still enough to make him groan. The control room lay in cold darkness around him. Mopping hair out of his face, Heath groped the silent panels for switches and controls he had almost forgotten the location of.

Power ... lights ... air ... temperature...

He looked up as a dim, colourless light returned to the walls. At his command the suspended monitor’s flickering shards formed into a schematic diagram of the local spacetime, hideously distorted by the time-hole’s unnatural intrusion. It was so close it now filled a quarter of the screen.

Eridos’s Blood, Heath breathed, the enormity of the situation hitting him. Now he’d switched the computer’s corrupted personality program off, it was up to him to drag the ship out of danger!

Angry lightning flickered and writhed around the naked black hole’s perimeter, occasionally leaping from one side to the other. Beyond the fluctuating edges Eridon could only see an intense frenzy of colour.

Licking dry lips, he attacked the landscape of touchpads and switches in front of him. Full power at last, he muttered as the lights intensified. The sound of his voice was a small comfort in the distressing silence. Now to direct it into breaking out of this timeline! By Eridos I hope this works!

What’s goin’ on, Heath? shouted a voice so much like Rhys’ that the young Eridon momentarily forgot he’d deactivated the personality program.

Heath stole a glance over his shoulder. Con Hatsopopoulos stepped uncertainly into the room, Charlotte, Aidan, Kirsty and Katarine following close behind.

Time-hole, the Eridon gestured at the 3D screen with a spare hand. No time to explain! He turned back to the console in front of him, resuming his frantic piano-playing.

What happened to Rhys? Charlotte cried.

Aye - he answers us not.

The control panel started to shudder dangerously beneath Heath’s hands, the background hum rising to an ear-piercing whine. I had to switch his personality program off! he yelled without looking around. It was getting too unstable!

Excuse me? shouted Aidan.

He’s gone! Heath shouted, impatient with the incessant questions. Why, by Kamrys, weren’t they breaking free?! It was almost as though something was pulling them into the time-hole!

Gone? Charlotte shrieked. What the Hell d’you mean, gone?

Beside her, the willowy Katarine gurgled noisily in agreement, touching the black medallion around her neck with long fingers. Yes - how could God be … gone?

Shut up and let me think, and we might get out of this alive! Heath screamed.

You mean we could die?! Con yelped.

"Yes, if you don’t be quiet!"

Shit. And just when I was startin’ to enjoy myself, too! His legs suddenly like jelly, Con sat down where he was.

The ship lurched sideways, sending half-castes stumbling across the room. Heath fell back against the metal rail behind him, but managed to retain his grip on the vibrating console. The naked singularity now filled the entire 3D screen, its squirming lightning reminding the terrified young Eridon of savage fangs closing around a ravenous, salivating mouth. Holy Eridos - we’re not going to make it...