Melinda M. Snodgrass

Double solitaire

Chapter One

Baby was gone.

All that remained was the retinal imprint of the amber and purple lights as they had elongated, and given a final burst of colored fire as the living spaceship shifted into ghost drive. Aboard that ship were Tachyon’s grandson, Blaise, the Morakh killer Durg, and Tachyon’s body. How many million miles from Earth were they by now? wondered Tach, and then the emotions hit, beating at the confines of her skull like terrified birds slamming against a window: anger, fear, loss, and a grief so deep it manifested as a physical pain. The screens that lined the Turtle’s shell gave back images of stars, gem bright against the blue black velvet of the upper atmosphere.

The silence inside the Turtle’s shell was like a living presence. Tommy was looking at her. Tachyon couldn’t meet his gaze, and now, as the urgency of the chase faded, Tachyon was horribly aware of the close confines within the Turtle shell. Necessity had placed her in Tommy’s lap, his arms around her waist, his thighs a warm pressure against her buttocks. She slid onto the floor at his feet, wedged herself against a console as she tried to escape his male heat. Tachyon could feel her heart beating in her stomach, and each pulse brought a burst of nausea.

With a moan she bent over the fecund swell of her belly and murmured, “No.”

“Ah, hell, we’re practically in fucking orbit.” Tommy’s head swung from screen to screen. All of them gave back the same black picture except the cameras mounted on the base of the shell. They showed the Earth. A long, long way down.

The shell gave a sickening lurch, tipped until it was edge on to the thinning atmosphere, and began to fall. Tommy let out an inarticulate yell of terror. Tachyon’s own problems paled to insignificance when measured against the current problem of immediate survival.

The Turtle “flew” by telekinetic power. He pictured himself “pushing” or “pulling” against something. Until a few seconds ago he had been clutching Tachyon’s living spaceship with teke fingers. Then Baby had made the transition to ghost drive and was now flying in regions that could only be described as the edges and cracks of reality. Tommy had nothing “real” to cling to.

Their speed was increasing with each second, becoming a headlong plummet that would end in death. No, end far sooner than that, Tach corrected herself.

Forcing a calm she did not feel, Tachyon said pedantically, “We are in what is commonly called in the spaceman business a catastrophic reentry. You must slow our rate of descent, Tommy, or we shall be cremated, or form a rather large crater somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard.”

Tom had his hands over his face, muffling his voice. “I can’t. I’ve got nothing to grab hold of!”

“There’s a very large planet directly below us. Push against that.” A tiny thread of panic set some of the words to jumping. Tach wiped sweat and froze halfway through the gesture. “Tommy, we are running out of time!”

“I can’t.”

“The man who outfoxed Bloat’s Wall can think of something!” It was becoming difficult to speak as G forces built inside the welded steel walls of the shell.

Her child’s mind quested, groped at the edges of her mother’s thoughts, trying to understand. Tach blocked Illyana, not wanting the baby to read Tach’s growing panic. “Goddamn you! If you kill my baby, I’ll never forgive you!”

Tach glanced at the screens. Most had gone dark, burned out by the rising skin temperature. Only two threw back an image. Flames. Tach tore Turtle’s hands from his face, gripped his chin, and forced his head up and around.

“Look!”

Turtle gave a moan of terror and dismay and assumed an even more fetal curl in the big upholstered chair.

Bad idea.

Tachyon pulled back her arm, her elbow brushing a metal console. It burned her skin. Plastic was beginning to melt and run, the smell catching like acid at the back of the throat. No, they wouldn’t burn up first, they’d die from asphyxiation – plastics were highly toxic. She swung, and her hand connected with Tommy’s cheek and ear in a furious slap. He yelped and looked up.

“How do you fly? How do you do any of the things you do? Tell me!”

“I pi-picture things like b-big hands or something.”

She gathered the front of his T-shirt in her hands. Sweat squeezed from the material to coat her fingers. “Then do it now. Wings. Big, beautiful wings. Like Peregrine’s. Spreading out. Catching the air. Slowing our descent.” Tommy’s eyes closed. His plump jaw tightened with concentration. “We’re gliding now.” Tach groped for more metaphors. “A parachute. Gigantic.”

The shell gave a jerk that sent her sprawling. Like a spear her elbow drove into a screen, shattering it and coating her arm with blood.

“Shit, are you okay?” asked Tom.

“You did it, Tommy, you did it!” She laughed into his frightened brown eyes.

“You’re bleeding.”

“It’s nothing.”

“So what do you want to do now?”

She looked at the final remaining screen. New York formed crystal-and-steel spines on the northern horizon. Exhaustion hit, slamming into her chest like a falling sandbag.

“Take me home, Tommy. Take me home.”

Manhattan. They were approaching at sunset, and the buildings thrust like stone lances at a bloody sky. Landmarks began flashing past. Soon they were over the leprous growth that was Jokertown. It was a wild flight with only a single camera; they were flying virtually blind. Tachyon stared into that single monitor, expressionless and passionless. There was no sense of homecoming, just a bone-sapping weariness. She had lost everything. Any hope of returning to her true home. Any hope of returning her lost soul to its true form.

The clinic came into view. The camera mounted on the belly of the shell gave her a fleeting glimpse of the stone lions that flanked the front steps. Then they were over the roof, and settling gently onto the tar-and-felt surface.

Turtle opened the hatch, and Tach climbed out. The August setting sun was beating down, giving the roof a gelatinous texture. Her tennis shoes stuck to the tar, making the impossible climb up the curving side of the shell even more impossible.

Tommy stepped out of the shell, forcing a protest from Tachyon.

“Tom, no, you might be seen.”

The ace didn’t reply, just held her gently around the waist and boosted her up onto the back of the shell. They stared at each other for a long moment, then Tom said simply, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Failing you.”

The scene in the street soon became chaotic. Doctors and nurses poured from the doors of the clinic. Patients craned out windows. Traffic stopped. Turtle had returned to Jokertown. Rumors were flying. He’d brought word that Tachyon hadn’t died at all. He’d returned to Takis, and died there, and now Turtle had a Takisian princess with him who was Tachyon’s widow and mother to his yet-unborn child.

Bradley Finn, the clinic’s only joker doctor, pranced in the street. The nervous clatter of his hooves on the sidewalk sounded like a bad flamenco troupe warming up. Troll, chief of security for the hospital, laid a shovel-sized, horny hand on the centaur’s withers. The palomino skin shivered, and Finn quieted.

Tachyon, seated on the top of the shell, studied the faces of her people. Suddenly Dr. Cody Havero strode through the doors of the clinic, and ice talons closed around Tachyon’s heart. Long ago, in another lifetime, Tachyon had loved this woman. Now she felt only shame.

“THIS IS DR. TACHYON.” Turtle had cranked up the volume on his loudspeaker, and the words reverberated off the brick of the buildings. “HE’S BEEN JUMPED AND HELD CAPTIVE ON THE ROX. THE FACT THAT HE KNEW HOW TO LOCATE ME SHOULD BE PROOF ENOUGH, BUT YOU ALL, NO DOUBT, HAVE PERSONAL EXPERIENCES THAT ONLY YOU AND DR. TACHYON HAVE SHARED. TEST HER, IF YOU MUST, BUT THIS IS TACHYON.”