Displaced

Chapter 86

The sounds of Arlette's footsteps echoed through the hall as she marched quickly towards the sleeping quarters, the only logical place for the Otharian Many to be. Coming upon the door, she pressed the green button as she'd observed Simona do. With a soft hiss, the panel slid aside, revealing another hallway leading inside. Even after seeing it in the Stragman ruins, the way the metal moved on its own, as if alive, with the single press of a finger still baffled her. But now wasn't the time to ponder such things. Now was the time for action.

She strode to the end of the short hallway, which terminated at another hallway perpendicular to this one. Down the hallway, in both directions, Arlette spied doors and panels. Which one housed the Many? With a mental shrug, she rounded the left corner and pressed the green button on the nearest panel. There was only one way to find out.

The door slid aside to reveal a small, plain room containing a thin bed that bordered on being a cot in one corner and a small cabinet in another that seemed to have grown from the wall and floor. After pausing just long enough to verify that the room was empty, she moved on to the next room, only to find it too was vacant. She tried the third room. Also empty. The fourth as well.

Finally, the fifth room bore fruit. Sitting alone against a wall, veil over her face, was the Many.

Arlette ripped the veil aside, startling the Many and activating the training ingrained in her since childhood. A hazy three-dimensional image appeared in front of the Many before quickly sharpening into the image of an empty room somewhere in Otharia. Arlette glanced around the image, looking for the handler who should have been somewhere nearby to take care of incoming communications, but she saw nobody.

"HEY!" she yelled, hoping that somebody was nearby but out of sight. No response came, other than a constant high-pitched sound coming from somewhere far outside the illusory room.

Hooking her pointer finger and thumb into her mouth, she blew a piercing whistle. Surely that would be loud and obnoxious to be heard by the Many handlers. And yet, still nobody appeared.

With a sinking feeling in her gut, Arlette realized that she was completely on her own. She couldn't even reach the man who'd inexplicably abandoned and likely betrayed her side, while his overly-zealous lackey was lying in a heap on the cold metal floor, completely unconscious. She had to fix this by herself.

Rushing back to the front of the gondola, she stopped by the empty chair. The complicated array of controls before her carried an intimidating aura. Over three dozen lights blinked at her, their meanings inscrutable. She could see at least seven different dials, four levers, and, of course, that large rod protruding from the middle of the entire setup.

Arlette shook her head and gave herself several mental slaps as she worked up her courage. Sure, the whole apparatus appeared unknowably complex at first glance. Yes, she couldn't even begin to fathom how any of it functioned, the inner workings being practically magic in her eyes. But this was not some mystical creation of some higher being. This was the creation of a person—a person no better than her or anybody else. They might have come from Earth, but that didn't automatically make them superior. Sofie was proof enough of that.

She could do this. She could figure it out. No, she had to figure it out, and quickly.

Stepping up to the controls, she placed her hand around the stick and moved her gaze to the world outside the craft. She quickly surveyed the land below. They'd completely passed over the battle at this point, leaving the chaos behind them. Below stood the low rolling hills of the Eterian plains, stretching on and on far beyond the horizon. All that could be found there was grass, the occasional tree determined to defy the odds, and a large mass of people headed their way from the west.