The fairings started to close, with only a moment to back myself in and avoid having a body part clipped off. “What happens when I find the Chime?” I yelled as the view pinched away. “Will they send us home?”
Naecia’s head snapped to us, eyes wide. She burst from her chamber as we were folded into darkness.
There was nothing now. No light. No sound from outside.
“Ben?” said Patton.
“Yeah?”
“Just wanted to make sure you were still in here.”
The voidscull pitched downward and my stomach swam into my throat. It felt untethered from the Silent Child, and I visualized the tiny craft with us inside, launching away from it. All of the things which should have brought mortal fear – shooting through space inside a suppository, knowing that my brain was set to be drilled when we reached our destination, the prospect that we were unlikely to ever return home – I observed as if they were happening to someone else. What terrified me in that moment was something else: the image of Naecia as she had erupted from her cell, and the expression she wore, now burnt in my mind’s eye. The face of someone who had just heard the world was ending.
64 Ctenopharyngodon idella.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Naecia stumbled from her chamber. “No! No! No!”
Aptat had already engaged the voidscull, sending it below decks and then out from the ship. Naecia flew to the console as quickly as she could, and leaned upon it, casting blindly over the controls. “You have to bring him back!”
“It’s autonomous,” said Aptat, casually. “And I have bigger problems.”
“That Earth man said he was trying to find the Chime!”
“Yes, that’s why the Scythin wanted him,” said Aptat. “Back to your chamber, now. It’s like I’m running a kennel for orphaned plorgies in here.”
Naecia sat down right on the floor. “You idiot.”
“Back in your chamber,” said Aptat, weaponry taking aim. “Now.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “We’re all dead anyway, thanks to you.”
Aptat’s expression was of one who had missed the punchline to a joke. “Explain.”
“If the Earth man leads them to the Chime, then everything is gone.”
“Gone?”
Naecia’s teeth creaked from the pressure of clenching. She glared at the stringhunter. “Do you not know what the Chime actually does?”
“I’ve heard the same rumors as everyone else. A nihilistic weapon, a magical relic that can wipe out galaxies. Tales no doubt designed by one stringhunter to dissuade other stringhunters from pursuing candidates who might be able to find it. Misinformation is commonplace when valuable Stringers are floating about. It isn’t the first time someone has played the galactocalypse card.” They paused, placing hands on hips, then tilted their head thoughtfully. “Okay. So? What is it you think the Chime does?”
“Creates a cold spot, a big one.”
“And why would one want to create a cold spot?”
Naecia shrugged her shoulders mockingly.
“You think it’s to force a dimensional handshake?”
“What else?” she said.