by Hodden, TE
Charlie reached out with his instincts, feeling for the disturbance.
It was rushing up to meet them through the bedrock.
“Move!” He snapped, as the three scattered.
The ash and dust exploded into the air, as a leech the size of a double decker bus burst from the ground, with a piercing steam-whistle shriek. The long feeder whipped around, trying to scent the three of them on the air, the serrated teeth of the circular maw pulsating and quivering.
The feeder reared up like a serpent, and whipped down towards Tilda.
Charlie grabbed Tilda and hoisted her away from the maw.
She tore her arm free of him. “What are you doing?”
Robin swatted the feeder away with her poleaxe. “It was about to eat you! Or didn’t you notice!”
“Of course, I noticed!” Tilda marched at the leech. “Hello! We seek passage down to Twilight!”
Robin cocked her head. “We aren’t going to ride on its back, or something are we?”
Charlie shook his head. “I don’t know. I hoped you might know!”
“Me?” Robin chuckled. “Sorry. I never strayed down to the Underworld… well… not before I was welcomed to the fold at the lake.”
Tilda crouched on a knee. “My Lord?”
The leech screeched another steam whistle call, and a serpent nest of tentacles whipped out of its feeder.
It happened in the blink of an eye.
Charlie got a glimpse of the purple tentacles slashing out at him, the crushing pain as the thick ropes of leathery flesh oiled about him, and wrapped tight, snaring his limbs to his body, and turning his vision dark about the edges, and then the ground was falling into the distance, and the maw of steak-knife teeth was closing in around him.
00100
Barney Mitchell lurked at the end of the bar, watching the crowd. He saw Brandi Summers as she hurried past the window, and had a few seconds to straighten his jacket and tee shirt, as she hurried in, before she saw him.
“Hey,” she said.
Barney smiled. “Hey. Are you okay? Your message sounded…” He gestured. “Troubling.”
“Troubling?” Summers asked. “Yeah. I guess troubling covers it.” She gave him a strained smile. “I didn’t know who to call. Probably the Police, but… what do I tell them?”
Barney smiled. “Would a drink help?”
*
An hour later Barney and Summers were in his Halo cruiser, as he pulled into the hangar at the airfield, and pressed a control on the wheel to lower the ramp of the Manta jet, without slowing. He drove up the ramp, and parked in the hold of the jet.
They climbed out the car, and Summers looked around, her eyes wide, the same way a kid’s might go wide in a candy shop.
Barney smiled at her. “Impressive, isn’t it?”
Summers nodded. “Do you know how useful these would have been down in Antarctica?”
He chuckled. “You haven’t seen the best of it yet.” He tapped a control on the bulkhead to fold out the smart-surface workbench. The tabletop lit up, and he placed the crystal needle she had shown him onto the surface. A line of green light swept back and forth, scanning the crystal.
The spooky hologram of her old mentor, Professor Warner played on the tabletop.
Pockets of data radiated out, surrounding the needle.
“Okay.” Summers giggled. “That is pretty damned cool. So… what does it say?”
Barney stroked his chin, and considered the readings. “Your crystal is weird, old, and alien.”
“Great.” Summers raised an eyebrow. “I’m so glad I asked the expert.”
“Well, technically that would be the Scarlet Knight, but… I muddle by.”
“What’s she like?” Summers asked, her smile twitching a little.
“Less annoying than the last one,” Barney muttered, studying the read outs, and refining the scan. “Fewer cheesy jokes. No puns…”
“Huh. Okay. So what else do we know?”
“We know it works by psionic resonance,” Barney muttered. “Which makes it a lot closer to the Osprey suit, than anything that belongs on Earth. The only matches that are showing up are the ones you found in Antarctica, which isn’t surprising…but look here, the crystal is of the same basic kind, but there is a different pollutant fingerprint, which means it wasn’t mined from the same source, maybe not from the same world.”
Summers cooed. “Do you have any idea how long I wait for these lab results?”
Barney tapped through the displays. “I have never seen a technology integrated with psionics so elegantly. It’s… far beyond alchemy…”
“Or Martian technology,” Summers said.
“No, and if we go looking for your friend, I want to know what we might be dealing with.” Barney pondered for a moment, then tapped open a communications link on the workbench display. “Luckily I know who to ask. Angel? Are you there?”
The display shimmered. Angel, in her hood and veil, swam into focus. She was at the communications console on the bridge of the Bumblebee. “Yes. Barney?”
“Hey.” Barney said, with a grin. “I was wondering if you could help out a friend of mine. She has been sent a little gift. It’s some kind of psionic-computer. I think it’s real old. Millions of years older than the Martian finds. Do you mind taking a look?” He tapped a control. “Pretty please.”
Angel chuckled, and leant close to her screen. “Oh, these are… incredibly old. They are relics of the Eibba, a sprawling Empire, that covered many worlds, across many star systems, that flourished for hundreds of thousands of ages. It splintered, and died, perhaps…” She toyed with her cuffs as she thought. “In human terms? Maybe forty million years ago?”
Summers leant over the worktop. “I… know you… I saw you… A few years ago, in the ruins of a city, in Antarctica, we found some of these. One still worked. At first it showed a recording of an alien then… You…It was your voice, warning of…Legion?”
Angel cocked her head. “You saw… my spell?”
Summers flushed. “Yeah. So… anyway…” She cleared her throats. “You know of the Eibba?”
“A little,” Angel admitted. “The Eibba was a tapestry of many cultures and species, united by common laws, and a common prosperity by the Wyvern, creatures of near limitless psychic power, who could communicate across the voids between stars, and help spaceships navigate the trade routes. Their outposts and trade routes stretched far outside their borders, perhaps even to Earth. When the Wyvern died out… the empire collapsed.” Her tone lightened. “You have… other relics?”
Summers flushed. “Well, the museum does, rather than me. But… yeah?”
“So,” Barney said, cutting in, “is there any threat we need to be aware of, from those who might deal in such… antiquities?”
“Oh.” Angel chuckled, embarrassed. “I do not know. The relics of the Eibba could be almost… well… anything.”
“Okay.” Barney grinned. “Thank you anyway.”
“You are welcome,” Angel said. “Mis, I hope to talk again When you have… less urgent matters at hand, I would very much like to see your museum.”
“Yes!” Summers grinned. “Please! I would… love that. I’m Brandi. Summers. Doctor Brandi Summers.”
“Yes,” Angel said, softly.
Barney tapped off the connection. “Okay then.”
“Okay?” Summers asked.
“Let’s see where your package came from.” He called up a new display, a map, and fed in the return address from the package. “Okay… It’s a farm. Want to go check it out?”
Summers didn’t hesitate, she stepped towards the car. “Yes! Sure!”
“Hey!” Barney stepped in her way. “The flight deck is up there.”
“Hang on!” Summers said, taking a bulky digital camera from her bag. She slapped in a fresh floppy disc. “Can I get a photo, or is it a secret?”
Barney laughed, and shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t think I can allow that.”
Summers rolled her eyes, and dropped the camera back in her bag.
*
Barney circled the Manta around over the farm.
The barns and farmhouse were in disrepair, the fields overrun with fallow grass and wildflowers.
Summers watched from the co-pilot seat, her face furrowed into a frown. “Doesn’t look like there is anybody home.”
“Not at first glance,” Barney admitted, pointing to the screen in the console. “Click there, through the camera options.”
Summers clicked through the sensor options, revealing the rabbits playing in the long grass, and the empty rooms of the abandoned farmhouse. The barn was a black void on all the sensors.
“Huh,” Summers muttered.
“It’s shielded,” Barney said. “Curiouser and curiouser.”
“Yeah,” Summers muttered.
Barney began the descent to the fields. “Let me guess… You would have loved those sensors in Antarctica.”
Summers grinned. “Next time I’m invited on a dig, I’m asking to borrow this.”
Barney set the Manta down, and unstrapped. As he got up, he touched his watch. He shrugged off his jacket, on his way down the steps into the hold. The Osprey suit fluttered from the back of the Halo cruiser, and wrapped itself around him.
Summers followed him down the ramp to the field. “Okay… That might take some time to get used to. Not that I don’t appreciate it, but…”
Barney grinned. “Hey, be nice about the suit.”
“Sorry,” Summers said, her cheeks cherry red.
Barney whispered to his suit. “Hey. Do you see anything the Manta can’t?”
The Osprey armour swiftly scanned the barn, but found it to be the same impenetrable void.
Barney inspected the barn door. The wood was a skin over a metal door, with a heavy seal. At his touch it hissed open with a whisper of hydraulics.
There was no movement within. The wooden walls were lined with thick layer of a honeycomb material, pinned in place by long lengths of chicken wire. The ceiling too, was sealed by the thick foam of rubbery material.
The floor was a marble smooth layer of reinforced concrete, onto which a raised platform of ancient, weathered, stone, was set.
“Anything?” Summers asked.
Barney nodded. “Yeah. There’s something…” He stepped into the barn, and held out his hand. The suit’s sensors were buzzing wild. “I think that’s a transport platform.”
Summers crouched by the edge of the platform, considering the reddish brown of the stone. “I think this is Martian.”
The doors hissed closed behind them. There was a clunk of a lock.
The platform began to hum.
Summers backed away. “I didn’t touch it.”
Barney flexed his thoughts. “Shield!”
The suit reconfigured, growing a tactical shield from his arm. He pulled Summers close, and held her behind the shield. With a crackle of static, the shield projected a forcefield, in a hemisphere about them.
A ball of plasma, warped out of the platform, shimmering and flickering a metre above the stone. Fingers of lightning sparked between the sphere and the platform.
A bolt of the energy flashed out, across the barn, straight at Barney and Summers, glancing off the forcefield with a pop of sparks and the spell of ozone.
“What is it?” Summers asked.
“It’s a transport platform!” Barney said, his voice raised. “It’s trying to melt us into energy so it can transport us somewhere else. Like a radiowave.”
“Is that safe?” Summers demanded.
“Not always for humans!” He answered. “We don’t have a stable enough psionic field.”
“Not always?” Summers squeaked.
More arcs of energy flashed out and hit the forcefield. The suit compensated as best it could, but red warning signs blinked on the inside of the field.
“Not,” Barney said, with a growl, “that I would want to be hoisted across the ether without knowing where we were going, or what was waiting for us…”
“No!” Summers agreed. “What can we do?”
Another barrage of energy bolts hit the forcefield, turning it scarlet.
Then the field failed, in a shower of sparks.
“No!” Barney tried to shove Summers away, but didn’t have time.
Lightning bolts of pure white energy struck them. Summer melted away into a shower of sparks, that cascaded over the floor, leaving an echo of her scream.
The sparks, arcs, and lights faded away.
Barney was stood, suddenly alone, in the vastness of the barn. “No! No!” He ran onto the platform and jumped up and down. “Dammit! Work! Work!” He stopped, and gasped for breath. “Can you do anything?”
His suit scanned the platform.
“Dammit!” Barney groaned. He tapped his earpiece. “Cathy! I really, really, need a hand.”
00101
Melisa adjusted the heading of the Bumblebee, and brought the shuttle into a stable lunar orbit. “Paradox Technology Lunar Site One, this is the Honour Guard shuttle Bumblebee, requesting clearance to dock.”
Angel looked up from her console. “Matthew is joining us.”
Melisa nodded. She could see the flash of light heralding the Praetorian’s approach.
A voice crackled over the radio: “Bumblebee, this is Lunar Site One. Follow the way markers to landing pad Beta. Say again: Beta.”
Melisa made the adjustment, and dipped her nose down towards the surface. “Pad Beta, understood. Put the coffee on, and we will be with you in ten minutes.”
The shuttle skimmed down over the crater-pocked wasteland of the Sea of Tranquillity, with the three connected domes of Site One on the horizon, their lights blinking as regular as a heartbeat.
Matthew pulled alongside the shuttle. “Good Morning! Is everybody well?”
“Not,” Angel said, tartly, “as well as those who could go home for a shower and a night in a real bed.”
Matthew chuckled. “Well, I suppose there is that.”
Melisa flicked some of the switches, slowed them to the hover, and touched down on the landing pad. She powered down the engines, and let the vessel settle.
Matthew landed beside the shuttle, and the pad descended through an airlock, into the hangar bay.
Three Paradox Technologies staff were waiting for them, with the powered sled to transport the engine parts. They wore yellow and black coveralls, with a plastic sheen, and tactical vests covered in pockets. Melisa watched them load the engine parts, then followed them down the ramp.
Matthew grinned up the ramp at them. “So… do you think they have coffee?”
*
Melisa found Professor Padmaja Saketha in the control room for the secure laboratory, sat in her nest of computer screens.
Beyond the gallery windows of the control room, robotic arms were lifting the engine components into chemical baths, the first stage of the process to extract the Alloy Six Three. As each piece was submerged, a battery of lasers began the smelting process.
Saketha was a lean, stoat of a woman, with owlish eyes, in loose fitting, comfortable clothes, that did not snag on the ceramic plating of her cybernetic arm and leg. One side of her face was webbed with faded scars, that flattened her smile. Her warmth and humour still showed through.
She waved Melisa over, and pushed out a spare chair. “Here to watch the show?”
Melisa sat down, and glanced over the desk. There were toys and stickers on everything.
There was a framed trading card, with a photo portrait of Saketha in her Silver Rose costume, back when she had been one of the Honour Guard. Back before she managed to survive the Manta Crash that killed Melisa’s parents.
Saketha stared at Melisa. “Hey. Are you okay?”
Melisa nodded. “Padmaja, back in the day…”
“Oh!” Saketha laughed. “Are you going to make me feel old?”
Melisa shook her head. “When you were in the Guard, yo
u and Mom, and Dad, you… did the time travel thing, right?”
Saketha nodded, a note of fondness in her flat smile. “Ah! Yes!” She rummaged on her desk, and found an old brass cap badge. “There were a few times. The big one was getting trapped in the forties for a while, on the trail of a man who wanted to rewrite history, by stopping D-Day with…” She pinched her nose. “With his pterodactyl army.”
It took Melisa a moment to make sense of that. “You fought Nazi dinosaurs?”
“No!” Saketha laughed. “Pterodactyls are distinct from dinosaurs, and… he wanted the Nazis to lose too. He was going to overwhelm the world’s armies and rule them all as the Dino-Tsar. He was… every bit as ridiculous as he sounded, but he had a time machine and a Gene Foundry, and they made him dangerous.”
Melisa nodded, as she stepped closer to the question she dreaded asking. “Were you ever worried…” She cleared her throat. “You were ever worried you would return home to a different future than you left?”
Saketha nodded. “That was absolutely the point. The four or five times I ventured into the past, it was always to protect the future. Sometimes from changes that were starting to happen, but often from…” Saketha held up a finger. “History is… organic. For small changes, little nicks and tucks, it will heal over, and find a way. If you step on a butterfly, it will find a bumblebee to pollinate the right flower. But… the bigger the change you try to make, the more… unintended consequences there are, and the bigger the risk of infection. It’s…” She closed her eyes. “It’s why I can’t just build a machine to go back and put right every mistake, every bad choice… every loss I suffered.” The plates on her cybernetic arm flexed, in her discomfort. “If I went back to the war, and saved the life of the man this cap badge belonged to, if he lived when he should have died, that one change might not alter the course of the battle, but… every day he was still alive, every choice he made, every word he said, would introduce more change, more wounds, and… two things can happen. Either the future shifts far enough along the new branch to stabilise, and the changes resolve themselves into a new history…”
“Or?” Melisa asked.
“Or…” Saketha said, softly. “History breaks apart into a Maelstrom. The universe collapses into a realm of elemental chaos.”