Onidus 22
My mind swirls with images of things I’ve never seen.
The shifting colors are taking some getting used to.
It’s like I’m accessing the thoughts of a bunch of different individuals all at once.
Thankfully, Ulian helps me clear the engines and ensure the ship is optimal as we head for Lumen Command and Viriden’s ship.
The moment I stop working, the heat rises again.
So I leave the group with Ulian to run checks on ION Striker and the others.
But a vision keeps breaking through of something new—a portal field with a modification to coalesce energy into new matter.
It uses a replication processor from our most advanced ships, something that connects with Vibrance.
The vision compels me, and I begin finding scrap and parts I can use to meld into new pieces.
I pick up a rusted flange, hold it in my hand, torch the rust off, and reshape it with a simple thought.
As I continue my work, I hear my name.
General Viriden walks up to me. We must have met up with the Silvian fleet. When his eyes see the symbols, regret fills his gaze. “Onidus?”
“I am still in here,” I say. “They have not taken my ability to speak. But the visions they send are demanding and persistent.”
“We need to get you to their world. There’s a portal there.”
“It is damaged,” I reply. “It will not work with what I am building.”
“That chip has plans the Nebs dragged out of a Ksion to help them travel through the dimensions. To build the opposite of what you build now. If they can do that, they can travel through space and time and destroy us before we ever got a hand up on them.”
I slide another bracket into place and weld it with a simple pinch of my fingers.
Light flares so brightly that it makes Viriden lean away.
“Which is why they are pushing me so hard now. They can help. But they need bodies again. Because the battle is still here. If Nebs figure out how to get to their dimension, they are on their own. And they know they are not enough.”
Viriden paces around my project beside ION Striker’s ramp. “Solara has already spoken with the Augurs and Aural Discerners because few believed what she was saying was true. Now they know.”
I slow for a moment, hearing her name. “Is she being inducted?”
“She took the oath shortly after your group arrived. They’re rushing the process because of the time-critical mission. Solara got a wristband with loaded Isonian medical data. She’s familiarizing herself now. She also wielded the Vibrance booster harness energy on the first try.”
“So Gairol is training her.” I imagine Solara with the chest harness, featuring the glowing orb at the center and how it must match her golden eyes. I bet she’s beautiful. But it no longer matters how I feel. “I’m glad to hear that.”
He seems dissatisfied by my response, but I’m too busy searching for the right kind of wiring in the pieces inside Chris’ stockpile to care.
“Your Bond to her isn’t going to interfere?”
“She knows I care. She is still with us. I haven’t lost her.”
“But you don’t have her, either. And I know how strongly a Bond can pull.” Viriden stops me from working by stepping in the way. “Onidus.”
Frustration overpowers me. “How I feel doesn’t matter when death for all of us is just around the corner!” I roar with the force and voices of many others. “Get out of my way!”
I cringe inside my shimmering body. I would never otherwise shout at a general. “I can’t stop, or I overheat. I can’t save everyone. I can’t have the one I want! But I can build. So, please! Just let me work!”
“Females are not usually allowed in battle,” he calmly adds like my outburst doesn’t bother him. “Are you sure you want this for her?”
No. I don’t.
But he can already sense that.
I keep working. “She wants to be on the frontlines more than she wants to be with me. She said as much. Humans do not bond the way we do.”
He rubs a hand over the back of his neck, then telekinetically lifts a scrap bin and slides it closer. Viriden holds his hands over the parts, then opens them toward the sky, bringing all of the pieces up into the air.
He’s helping me despite the fact that I shouted at him. “What else do you need?”
Time, which we don’t have. “A hyperdrive igniter. Twelve of them.”
Viriden closes his eyes as I work. He transfers the parts into the grasp of one hand and lifts the other hand, summoning igniters from his ship into Chris’.
“We will send you in a troop transport to collect whoever comes through. Chris is going to stay with Solara until she’s assigned a squad.
He’s monitoring the Delsfein signals now through our communications room and providing updates as they send them.
“Understood.”
Viriden grumbles. “I am sorry for what has happened to you, Onidus. All of it. Your parents, your teams, your Bond, Delsfein, and now this transformation.”
I shake my head as I pair up two pieces of a portal generator modulator, and weld them together by touch, then add them to the larger unit. “It was never your fault. It all just made me what I need to be.”
What this universe needs.