Song of Many ’Verses, Chapter 3

3.
The Off-Label Path

“You’re sure they’re in the Mirach System?” It was probably the sixth or seventh time John MacNamera had asked that.

Tomlin didn’t rise to the bait. “That’s the latest intel, which is less than a week old. We wondered why they were no longer following the attack schedule Phantom, one of our top Operatives, worked out. If Riddick has, indeed, taken over as their commander, that could be why.”

The combat pilot was moving from station to station on the Kublai Khan’s bridge—there was an odd distinction between how military and civilian spaceships named things; on the Santa Clara, this room would have been called the flight deck, but aboard the merc vessel, which had most of the trappings of a military ship, that term was reserved for the massive hangar that they had docked in—adjusting controls as he went. Toombs, cuffed and sprawled in a nearby seat, grumbled quietly to himself.

The merc ship was, from the little MacNamera had seen of it so far, a ghost ship. There was no crew to speak of, even though the bridge contained half a dozen stations that ought to have been manned. What was someone like Toombs doing with it?

“How long will it take us to get there?” he asked instead, another flutter of worry moving through him. It was now almost three weeks since Audrey had disappeared. Anything could be happening to her.

“Not long.” Tomlin moved to another panel and began punching in codes. “There’s a trick to Star Jumping that only a very few know. If, instead of plotting a course using the Star Jump database, or using one of the course presets, you supply the Isomorph Drive with your starting and ending coordinates and let it map the way…” He pressed a button on the console and looked up, a hint of a pleased smile on his face. “…you can shave weeks, or even months, off the journey. But you’ll see some very strange things outside of your windows instead of just the blank nothing of normal star jumps.”

“An’ you know this how?” Toombs growled, his expression challenging.

“I’ve done it.” Tomlin moved to another panel. “The protocol is experimental. Off-label. I was asked to test it, and my journey was successful. I traveled from Furya to Tangiers Prime, and back, in three days each way. Most of the transit time was sublight, clearing the gravity wells and dodging surveillance beacons.”

“No fuckin’ way.”

Tomlin just smiled and moved to the final panel on his itinerary. “You’ll get to see for yourself shortly. Tell me how you came to be in command of this vessel.”

“Ain’t your business.”

“Oh, I think it is,” Tomlin said. “How did you manage to inherit Antonia Chillingsworth’s property?”

Toombs grimaced. “You don’t want to know.”

“No, I really do.” Tomlin finished setting the controls on the last panel.

“System alert,” a canned female voice said over the speakers. “Star Jump commencing in T-minus five minutes. All crew report to your designated stations.”

“You’d never believe me,” Toombs grumbled.

“I’ve had a great deal of practice, in the last five and a half years,” Tomlin said as he walked over to Toombs, “believing six impossible things before breakfast. Try me.”

The two men locked eyes; Toombs looked away first.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “If you tell me how you survived the New Marrakesh Spaceport Explosion. You were its primary target. How’d you live when hundreds didn’t, without even a scratch on you?”

That, MacNamera thought, was a very good question. He’d seen the news feeds of that explosion, which had damaged everything in its path for miles, and had instantly vaporized everyone close to it. Two terrorists, Javor Makarov and Duke Pritchard, had been declared responsible for it; Makarov was dead and Pritchard was still at large. But now this Toombs guy was saying it had been an assassination attempt?

“Very well,” Tomlin said, sitting down in one of the chairs. He met MacNamera’s eyes and gestured for him to sit down as well. “After you.”

Toombs’ sotto voce grumblings had something to do with Tomlin’s parentage. “Fine. Husbands trump blood relatives in the next of kin chart, don’t they?”

Shock widened Tomlin’s eyes, and then he sputtered with laughter. “You? You’re Mister Chillingsworth?”

Toombs rolled his eyes. “Yeah yeah, get it all out. Yes. That’s me. Mister Chillingsworth, for fuck’s sake. I was the fuckin’ captain of the Kublai Khan ten years ago, before that shitbird Junner showed up. Had it all worked out, too. Every move, nice and smooth. I was gonna be set up for life, I thought.”

Tomlin looked more entertained than ever. “You hadn’t done your homework where she was concerned, had you?”

“Thought I had,” Toombs grumbled.

“Not sure I get what the big deal is,” MacNamera said, looking between the two men. “You married the owner of this ship, and inherited it when she died? What’s so unbelievable about that?”

“Antonia Chillingsworth,” Tomlin said, appearing to still be fighting laughter, “was a notorious black widow who went through at least a dozen wealthy husbands. Most of her fortune came from the men she inherited from upon their untimely deaths. Her involvement in any of those deaths could never be proved. Fifteen years ago, she bought this ship, using up almost her entire amassed fortune in the process, and turned it into… well, why don’t you tell Colonel MacNamera what she turned it into, Toombs?”

“After you spill,” the mercenary grumbled. “I told you what you wanted to know. Now it’s your turn.”

“Very well,” Tomlin said. “It is, in fact, the story about how your daughter,” and he nodded in MacNamera’s direction, “saved my life.”

By the time Tomlin reached the doors of the pilots’ lounge, his heart had begun to race and he was having a hard time suppressing shivers. He kept his walk and body language as calm as possible, smiling at the staff and returning their greetings—they all knew him and were happy to see him again—but the growing conviction that he might die that day had begun to hit a fever pitch.

The man following him was one he had seen, on more than one occasion, in the entourage of the Quintessa envoy. Given that the Quintessa Corporation knew exactly where he was going—he hadn’t even tried to hide his plans, the more fool he—there was no need to surveil him. Which meant that the man’s intentions were a thousand times darker.

Tislilel had been right. About everything.

“We just know that they’ll do anything—anything—to cover up the existence of Threshold Syndrome and what causes it,” she had told him the very first time he had met her, not long after he had watched her swim through thin air. “So please let that part go. They have ways of making evidence disappear.”

The files he had planned to retrieve from Tangiers Station A were probably already destroyed. His knowledge that the Scarlet Matador had undergone a Level Five Incident, and his resistance to the new narrative that the crisis had been a rare pathogen on board the ship—

That lie doesn’t even make sense, he thought again. All of the passengers and crew were in cryo for the entirety of the journey, unable to infect each other, and none of the quarantine protocols for a pathogen were used when they were being kept in the hospital!

—His resistance to that lie and his awareness of just how many holes were in it made him the most inconvenient piece of evidence of all.

“Regardless of what the secret is,” Tislilel had told him when they met for the second time, “they’re willing to kill whole shipfuls of innocent people to keep it hidden. I’m really worried that you’re in their crosshairs, too.”

She had been right. The girl—half his age at the oldest she could possibly be—had made several astonishing moves to try to protect him, too. One still awaited him in a locker back in town.

I need to go to ground. Using the new ID she made for me.

“Colonel Tomlin?” Emmahin, one of the lounge’s hostesses, said after a moment. “Did you want to check your bag while you eat?”

His bag. Containing a change of clothes in case he had to stay on Tangiers Station A longer than just a few hours…

“Not quite yet, thank you,” he told her. “I need to make use of your restroom first, please.”

“Of course,” she said with a smile. “Would you like your usual prepared while you do?”

He gave her a smile in return. “Not yet either. But thank you, Emmahin.”

The plan was embryonic. Simple. He would change out of his uniform and into his civilian clothes, which came complete with a face-concealing tagelmust, and try to slip past his tail without the man’s knowledge. He would leave his comm and his cards behind, using the bit of emergency cash he had on him to pay the transit fare back into town, just in case his calls and financial transactions were being monitored. Then he would get the ID Tislilel had created for him, and the funds she’d said were with it. Once he had them, he would dodge the Quintessa Corporation long enough to make a few decisive moves of his own—

This could destroy the Federacy itself, he reflected as he changed out of his uniform. He’d said as much in his message to his younger brother. What I’m about to try to do could have repercussions throughout known space. If I’m right about what they’re doing, taking them down could end faster-than-light interstellar travel.

But if he was right, the monstrous crime that allowed it to occur at all was unendurable. He couldn’t stand by and allow it to continue.

Neither Tislilel nor Dihya seemed to have figured it out, even though it was their actions, and the cost of those actions, that had made the pieces fall into place for him. He had watched as Tislilel, only half conscious, had tracked the path of the two shuttles, her eyes unerringly following the route they were taking even though they were in an entirely separate uni­verse…

He had seen the waves of fatigue that had struck her as she brought each of the shuttles back from “Elsewhere” to Othman Plaza. Carried her in his arms as she had slept, and even as she struggled to regain consciousness. Kept his arm around her as she unsteadily walked, for brief periods, before she succumbed to exhaustion again. How much worse, he wondered, would it be to hold an entire starship in one’s mind, for hours or days at a stretch, and control which universe every single atom of it resonated with the whole time?

Could that kind of exertion kill? Did it, sometimes?

And who… or what… died when it did?

He finished changing, slipping the key that Tislilel had given him into an inner pocket of his djellaba and his bit of cash into another pocket. Everything else—his comm, his ID, all but one of his funding cards—went into his bag along with his uniform.

Emerging from the restroom, he took in the other diners in the lounge. Late into the overnoon hours as it was, the place was rather full. He recognized one of the crews, just receiving their food, and exchanged brief pleasantries with them for a moment. Then he took his bag over to the coat check table.

“Emmahin,” he said as he checked in the bag, “I must be sleepier than I thought. I left something important back at my house and must go fetch it. Thank the heavens I arrived so far ahead of schedule, or I’d have to rebook my flight. Can you keep my bag here while I go get it?”

“Of course, Colonel Tomlin.” She took the bag and set it on one of the shelves behind the counter. “I hope you’ll still have time to dine when you get back.”

“Hopefully,” he told her. “It shouldn’t take long. In the meantime, though…” He offered her the funding card he’d held onto. “Captain Amayas’s meal is on me. His whole table, in fact.”

Although Emmahin rang up, and he signed for, the food that the table had already ordered, he had her keep the card in case they wished to order additional courses or desserts. He’d sign for those as well, he told her, as soon as he returned. There was no real risk involved there; none of the people at the table had ever ordered such things when he’d dined with them.

But just in case things went bad, just in case he didn’t manage to shake his tail… just in case he was murdered that day… he wanted her knowing, with absolute clarity, that he had intended to return.

Even if his true intention was to disappear.

Tomlin didn’t obscure his face until he was almost through the door to the concourse, waving goodbye to several acquaintances in the lounge before exiting, his face now covered, and strolling in a leisurely fashion away from his departure gate. A reflective surface showed him his shadow, seated on a bench, pretending to read while glancing regularly at the lounge’s en­trance…

…not following him.

No one shadowed him as he left the spaceport. He was one of only three passengers to board the train back into town. He had shaken his tail.

The locker that Tislilel had rented was next door to one of the train’s stops. He unlocked it and drew out the thick folder inside before seeking out another restroom, a place where surveillance cameras would be forbidden.

The folder contained a remarkable set of IDs. Whoever his young Tislilel really was, she was a skilled professional in the Game. They identified him as Yedder Mazigh, one year younger than his actual age, supposedly a former member of his old squadron who had been forced out of combat by a spinal injury. He had a license to fly virtually any aircraft or spacecraft he pleased, documents for traveling between worlds, and a handful of bearer cards.

“There’s money in the locker, too,” Tislilel had told him as she’d given him the key. “I figured you’d need some funds to cover getting everybody out of town safely…”

At that point, all the survivors of the Scarlet Matador were on their way into the mountains and the high plains beyond them. The tribes had taken on responsibility for their care. He would, however, probably need the funds to cover his own tracks.

He pocketed his new documents, deciding that the first things he needed to purchase would be a wallet to store them in and a new comm to use, and left the restroom.

It was almost noon. The sun above him was intense, making him glad of the airy robes and protective tagelmust he’d changed into.

I need sleep, he thought. Aside from catching a brief nap in between meetings, it had been roughly forty hours since he’d slept, thirty-five hours since he had staked out Dihya’s and Tislilel’s doorstep for his second meeting with the girls, twenty-eight hours since their third, nearly-catastrophic meeting at Othman Plaza… almost fifteen hours since he had kissed both girls goodbye in a shop by the night market.

He had made sure, just an hour or two earlier when he had feared his death was imminent, that Takama and his father would step up to fulfill his promises to both girls. He hoped he’d be able to keep those promises himself, but that would depend on—

A clap of what he thought, for a moment, was thunder buffeted at him. The windows near him rattled and the leaves in nearby trees rustled.

It hadn’t come from above, he thought in confusion, registering at the same time that the sky was cloudless. It had come from the northwest.

There was no traffic on the boulevard. Tomlin walked out into the center of the wide road and turned toward the source of the boom.

A thick cloud of black smoke was rising into the sky from one of the spaceport’s concourses.

Not just any concourse, he realized. It felt like a punch to the gut.

“My God,” he gasped softly. “Emmahin… Captain Amayas…”

Light flared, brilliant as the sun, and he flung up his arms to shield his eyes.

An enormous red fireball was expanding where the black cloud had been. Its shockwave, he realized, was rapidly approaching, blowing leaves off of the trees and smashing windows further down the boulevard as it came—

He flung himself to the pavement a fraction of a second before the deafening blast hit.

When Colonel Tomlin rose to his feet a moment later, New Marrakesh was in a billion shattered pieces around him. The shockwave had broken every window for miles, ripped foliage off trees, and set every alarm system shrieking. From behind many of the smashed windows, where apartments were situated above storefronts, he heard screams of fear and pain.

To the northwest, the gory fireball was rising into the air, a column of fire raging beneath it.

The shuttle he’d been planning to board. The concourse he had walked through. The pilot’s lounge he’d used as cover to shake his tail—

“Seven hundred forty-two people died in that blast,” Tomlin said, his voice heavy and his expression regretful. “Another fifty-three died in the days that followed from critical injuries. More than four thousand survivors were injured. And my city was financially crippled, with billions of UDs in damage. Trillions, when the destruction of the Scarlet Matador, the Lucy Ricardo, and six other shuttles, is calculated in. All to kill me.”

“I don’t get that,” MacNamera said, frowning. “What could you possibly know that’d be worth that much collateral damage?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be that big,” Toombs grumbled. “Not according to that son of a bitch Pritchard. He delivered the bomb to Makarov. It was supposed to be just big enough to make sure nobody in the pilot’s lounge, or the gate area for the shuttle, survived, in case you were in either location. Fucker sent me a message afterward, ’bout bein’ afraid of gettin’ identified as a terrorist, but he said he found footage of you checkin’ your bag and leavin’ the lounge and decided maybe he could pin the whole damn thing on you if he found you alive, like it was really your bag that exploded. Said he had a line on you because you had some accomplices. I didn’t get the message until months later. He’d set it to be delivered to me if a warrant got served on his Merc Network account. By the time I got it, I was on Shakti Four and everybody knew what he’d done. Bastard tried to make me his accomplice after the fact.”

“Did you have any idea of his other activities?” Tomlin asked.

“I knew he was a perv with some sick kinks he had to pay extra for, but no, I had no idea what he and Makarov were doin’ to women an’ girls. One day I’m gonna catch up with that motherfucker and perp-walk him straight into the most hellified triple-max I can find—”

“You won’t,” Tomlin told him. “He’s been dead for five and a half years. The ‘accomplices’ he was going after were Tislilel and Dihya… Audrey and Kyra. They killed him.”

“They what?” MacNamera gasped. His daughter had killed someone?

…His daughter had been the target of a serial killer?

“Tislilel and Dihya…” Toombs muttered. “Goddamn, we was lookin’ right at ’em at your memorial. Your younger brother claimed they were his cousins. I had my suspicions until that vid of the two of them with Riddick on Shakti Four came out… Big Evil really wasn’t in on any of it?”

“He was never there,” Tomlin chuckled. “Tislilel—sorry, Audrey—fabricated the video. I learned about that well after the fact, long after she had left Tangiers Prime. Given what I knew about her, especially her skills at breaking security systems and creating false identities, I had no idea she was only thirteen when she did all of it. Not until I was able to get back into contact with my family, and I had to let them believe I was dead for nearly a year.”

“She didn’t break any systems,” MacNamera groaned, comprehension striking. “She knew all the back-doors I’d been required to build into them for law enforcement and counter-terrorism. She’d read all the specs. That was probably a bad thing to let an eidetic do.”

“Or a very good thing,” Tomlin mused, “given how many lives she saved with that knowledge.”

“Which brings us back to my question,” MacNamera said after a moment’s thought. “What is it that you know that was worth killing so many people to suppress?”

“Back then, it was only a suspicion I had,” Tomlin replied. “It’s been proven out since then. I know how the Quintessa Corporation’s Isomorph Drives work.”

“Bullshit,” Toombs scoffed. “That secret’s guarded more securely than the Mona Lisa.”

Just two months earlier, MacNamera reflected, news of another intrepid group’s attempt to break into the Louvre on Old Earth and “liberate” its greatest treasure had hit the beacons, detailing the gruesome deaths all but one member of the team had experienced. The lone survivor would eventually walk again, but not before years of regenerative surgeries.

“And yet I know it,” Tomlin insisted.

“Not possible,” Toombs argued back. “I know a guy, got his hands on one of those boxes. Took him six years to force it open, and he tripped some kind of destruct mechanism in the process. All that was left inside was some stuff that looked like black sand or somethin’.”

“And he believed all of the electronics inside had been destroyed, yes?” Tomlin smirked, but his eyes were, oddly, sad. “There were none inside. The ‘box’ doesn’t house proprietary electronics. It’s a prison cell.”

“Sorry,” MacNamera heard himself say. “It’s a what?”

“It’s a cage. Each Isomorph Drive contains a living creature, a member of a species we call the Apeiros. The Quintessa Corporation captured and enslaved the species more than four centuries ago. These creatures are pan-dimensional and are capable of traveling between universes with a thought.” Tomlin met MacNamera’s eyes. “Your daughter is the source of most of our evidence about this. She made contact with the Apeiros. It’s because of what she learned about them that we know the real cause of Level Five Incidents now.”

MacNamera felt like the bottom had dropped out of his world. “And… what is that cause?”

“They happen when an Apeiros isn’t provided enough energy to maintain control over a Star Jump, and ends up overwhelmed, and dies. Its last act, in an attempt to save the lives on board its ship, is to bring the ship halfway back into U1 but leave it halfway in the other universe, in the hopes that one or more of its passengers will develop a conscious awareness of the multiverse and bring the ship the rest of the way home. At some point long ago, it must have even worked, because the Quintessa Corporation is very thorough about making sure that Level Five Incidents never have any survivors. It worked, again, with Audrey and Kyra.”

“Star Jump commencing in ten seconds,” the canned voice announced over the speakers. “Nine… eight… seven…”

“An’ one of those things is about to move us through space?” Toombs demanded, looking panicked. “An’ you’re just lettin’ it pick the route it takes?”

“Four… three…”

“Yes, Mr. Toombs,” Tomlin said, his expression calm. “I’m letting the real pilot of the Kublai Khan take the helm.”

“Isomorph Drive engaging.”

MacNamera had been awake for Star Jumps before, although the trippy feeling that came with them wasn’t something he relished. Most people preferred to sleep through them. This time—

Reality inverted.

He felt, for a moment, as if every dimension unfolded and flattened, refolding itself seconds later. Outside the Kublai Khan’s viewscreens, the stars multiplied, swirled, blazed with millions of named and nameless colors, and then—even as reality folded itself back up—settled back into a normal pattern. A new pattern. They were in a different part of the sky.

“Isomorph Drive disengaging,” the canned voice reported. “New location: outer orbits of the Mirach System. Necromonger Armada detected. ETA six hours. All systems are nominal.”

“How in the blazes…?” Toombs gasped.

“As I was explaining earlier,” Tomlin told them, moving to one of the consoles to lay in a new course, “when you let the Apeiros choose the route between two points, instead of making them use one of the routes in the data­base… the journey is almost instantaneous.”

Six hours, MacNamera thought. Six hours until he had a chance to get answers about his daughter’s fate. Six hours in which he could also, he hoped, find out what else Tomlin knew about her last missing time years ago. But first…

“It’s your turn to talk, Mr. Toombs,” he said, rising from his seat. “What’s so special about this ship and why were you hunting my daughter?”

Toombs grumbled under his breath for a moment. “Her association with Riddick ain’t enough?”

“He’s ‘associated’ with hundreds of people. Why her?”

“Tell him,” Tomlin said when Toombs failed to respond, “or I will.”

“Fine,” Toombs grumbled. “Six years ago, the Kublai Khan picked up an emergency skiff with three passengers on board. Riddick, an Imam from Helion Prime, and a kid. Your kid. My… late wife… had me on ice at the time, fortunately in a regular cryo chamber and not one of the house specials. Cheaper than a divorce, I guess. I missed most of the party. When I got thawed out, Riddick an’ his friends were on the run and my ball-an’-chain had flipped her shit over it. We was supposed to find ’em and recapture Riddick. Word was she didn’t give a rat’s ass what happened to the other two in the process. Or any of us. I almost got eaten by a Brax.”

MacNamera had gone completely cold. Someone had tried to unleash a Brax on his daughter?

“Things got hairy. Riddick killed the wife’s new boy-toy, Junner. Stabbed him through his eye. She was waiting for him, though, on board her little yacht that I guess she knew he’d try to hijack. She shot him in the arm. Was getting’ ready to shoot him in the head, when your little girl picked up Junner’s rifle and blew hers off.”

The atmosphere had turned glacial. His knees suddenly felt weak.

Tomlin’s hands were on his shoulders. “You’re okay, Colonel MacNamera.” The pilot steered him back to his chair.

“You’re saying my daughter killed Antonia Chillingsworth,” he managed after a moment. “And… you were hunting her for that?”

“Nah.” Toombs shook his head. “First of all, don’t tell her I said this, but no jury in the ’verse would ever convict her. If someone tried to prosecute and brought out the video of her pulling the trigger, her defense team’d make them bring out the rest of the videos. Which include my dearly departed demoness stringin’ your kid up and almost feedin’ her to a pair of Shrill—”

“What the fuck?” MacNamera started up out of the chair, hands fisting.

“Hey. I wasn’t awake yet when that happened. But look, I ain’t got anything against your daughter. Thanks to her shot, I own this ship an’ its contents, anyway, so even if my old lady had treated her like a princess and not like xeno-chow, I’d still be in her debt.”

“Then why… the fuck… were you hunting her?”

“Wasn’t hunting her. I was tryin’ to get intel on Riddick. When she and Kyra escaped from a hospital on Helion Prime half a year later, I thought she was with Riddick. I couldn’t find his trail but I figured I could find hers, an’ I figured she’d lead me to him.”

“Maybe that was true back then,” Tomlin said, his voice calm. “Why did you go after her on Deckard’s World?”

More sotto voce grumbling.

“Speak…” Tomlin chambered a round into his pistol. “…up.”

“Fine. I was plannin’ on bringin’ her here. To the Mirach System.”

“You were going to use her as bait to try to catch Riddick?” Tomlin scoffed. “The new Lord Marshal of the Necromongers?”

“Maybe that’s what I told her, but no. Word was he was lookin’ for her, had standin’ orders that all of his soldiers had to bring him anyone they encountered who looked even a little bit like her. I was gonna offer her to him. In trade.”

“For?”

“He’s got a prisoner of his own, an’ he may not know it, but she’s worth a whole lot of scratch to her people. Irena Kirshbaum, of the—”

“Quintessa Corporation,” Tomlin finished for him. “Your old boss who ordered my death. And what, exactly, were you planning on doing with her?”

“She owes me a payday. Last year she hired me to bring Riddick to Helion Prime. An’ I may not have personally delivered him to her, but I damn well got him there. So I figure, I get her out of the Armada an’ back to her people, she’ll be suitably grateful and finally pay up.”

“So you were planning on selling my daughter to Riddick…” That thought alone made MacNamera’s blood froth in his veins. “…not using her to catch him?”

“Are you kidding? He’s the Lord Marshal of the Necromongers. His bounty may be more than a mill, but there ain’t no cashing it in.”

“More than a mill?” MacNamera frowned. “Why would anyone pay that much for a convict, even a multiple-murderer?”

“That’s not what it’s for,” Tomlin said, sitting down and disarming his gun. “Nobody pays that much for a convict. But that…”

The pilot speared both MacNamera and Toombs with his gaze as he spoke.

“…is what the Federacy is willing to pay for an escaped slave.”

Posted on the 25^th anniversary of the theatrical release of Pitch Black, February 18, 2025.