The House on Infinity Loop

by Bonnie K T Dillabough

  As they shut the door to the gate office behind them and Tidbit curled up in his bed, Jenny laid the MDPs, 5 of them, on the desk before her.

  Lyra and Mynn gasped. "Are they full?" Mynn asked eagerly.

  "One of them is. I haven't checked the rest. Could this be what Sneaky Sam was looking for?"

  "I wouldn't be surprised," said Nona. "If all of these are full, anyone could supply an entire army, depending on what's in them."

  Jenny agreed. "I think Lizzie must have keyed them to me, since I was able to peek into the one I looked at. Can I transfer that key or add you three to be able to access these? If they are full, this is five warehouses of stuff. It'd take me years to catalog it all."

  "Unless of course, the catalog is in LizzieAI," Lyra said, rolling her eyes, as if it was so obvious anyone should have thought of it. And she may have been right, Jenny thought, with a shrug.

  Sure enough, when she queried LizzieAI, she affirmed that all of the MDP's were full. Jenny was so glad that the tablet would only open at her command.

  "Asking permission to transmit this to The Council," said Nona, a salute implied in her crisp tone.

  "Of course. They should know. What can we do to secure them? Should you take them back to headquarters?"

  "I don't know, Jenny. That might be an obvious move and we don't know how far the Groga have infiltrated the network. They may actually be safer right here. This gate office has proven to be impervious to attack, so far, at least with the weapons the Groga brought to bear last time. Either way, I will let The Council know and you should send a message to Lova."

  After she had done so, Jenny asked LizzieAI where she would recommend to keep the MDPs in the office.

  "There is a floor vault under the desk, with the keyword, '88badWolf88'," LizzieAI told her.

  Jenny never ceased to be amazed at the forethought and precautions Lizzie had taken in all she had done. Jenny hoped that this would eventually come with experience.

  She stooped to peer below the desk. Sure enough, there was a tile on the floor that looked different from the others. Rather than a combination lock such as you would expect, there was a button. Jenny pressed it and a keyboard slid out with a plain grey and black display. She typed the password in and the tile slid away, revealing a small safe with a number of small items in it. She didn't take time to examine them, however. She felt an urgency to put the MDPs in a secure place. She definitely wasn't going to carry them around with her.

  No sooner had the tile slid back into place, she rose to find all three of her guards standing, facing the door to her house, with their quarterstaffs in their hands, Lyra with a finger over her lips.

  "There was a noise," she sent in mindspeech and pointed to the door that led into the house.

  "I'm sure it's just the boys back to report," Jenny sent back.

  "And if it isn't?" Lyra arched an eyebrow. Jenny shrugged.

  "Stay behind us." Nona sent as they headed for the door.

  They opened the door silently, and as they entered the living room it was as if time slowed. Several things happened all at once.

  Three workmen stood as if frozen in a moment of time. The shock on their faces was evidence that they didn't expect to see anyone in the house. Their gray coveralls and the toolboxes in their hands told Jenny there was probably a work van parked out in her driveway. But if these had been the workmen Burt had contracted, he would have warned her they were coming, and they wouldn't be scowling at the four women as if they meant murder.

  Before the moment of shock was dispelled, Tidbit was in the air, leaping with an enraged howl, claws extended, directly at the face of the workman in the front. Jenny had no idea he could leap so high. He dug his claws into the man's face and shredded his eyes, leaving bloody streams running down his face and continued to attack. The man screeched in pain and rage and tried to pull the cat off of him, but Tidbit had dug his front claws into his shirt and was now clawing his belly with his hind feet.

  In the meantime, Lyra, Mynn and Nona had surrounded the two other men, their quarterstaffs whirling. From the toolbox one man had grabbed a long handled wrench and was swinging it in an attempt to ward off Nona's attack and the other had a large maul in his hand. But neither of them had the reach allowed by the quarterstaffs and their weapons were unwieldy.

  Whack! Whack! Crack! Lyra and Mynn alternated rapid blows from either side of the man with the beard. The dark-bearded man with the maul had no chance to connect because he couldn't strike at one without exposing himself to the other.

  Jenny saw that the first man was laying on the floor, moaning, clutching his bloody face in his hands, Tidbit standing over him and making that curious half howl, half growl she had first heard when he had attacked Cinder what now seemed like years ago. The front of the man's shirt was oozing blood. He wouldn't be a problem any time soon.

  She decided she could do the best by aiding Nona. She and the grizzled fellow with the wrench were circling one another cautiously. Jenny's mind flashed back to all of those practice sessions when Arvid had insisted she retrieve her staff over and over again out of her MDP until it seemed to appear in her hands like a magic trick and how useless it had seemed at the time.

  But now it flashed into her hands and the man who was circling with Nona had his back to her. Evidently, since she appeared to have no weapon, he hadn't thought of her as a threat. Her staff came down on his head with an audible "CRACK!" and the man fell like his bones had melted.

  Now the last man, his maul in his hands and his face in an enraged scowl was surrounded by four angry, armed women who circled him, whacking at him from every angle. With a growl of disgust, he threw the maul down on the floor so forcefully that it cracked a tile. "I GIVE! I GIVE!" he shouted, throwing both hands into the air.

  Lyra gave him a final whack in the gut and he fell to his knees.

  Nona went straight to work, handcuffing each of them roughly while Mynn pulled out her first aid kit. "We want you to be healthy when we interrogate you," she purred sweetly.

  The man groaned as she cleaned his wounds. "He won't be able to see again," she said cheerily. "but we can't afford to have him die of an infection now, can we?"

  The fellow Jenny had cracked on the head lay very still. "Is he dead? Did I kill him?" she asked, and she realized she was trembling.

  "No," said Nona briskly. "But he's gonna have one heck of a headache when he wakes up. He's probably got a concussion, but that's for the healers to determine. Help will be coming through the gateway, you'll want to greet them."

  Jenny almost collapsed with relief. In all of this time, it hadn't yet occurred to her that she might actually kill someone. The sandwiches they had eaten earlier roiled in her stomach.

  Sure enough, when Jenny entered the gate office, healers and guards were streaming through the gateroom door. Jenny thanked them and led them into the living room which now seemed excessively crowded. But not for long. The healers took in the scene quickly and started giving orders to guards who manifested stretchers from their MDPs and began to put the two injured men on them and take them directly back to the gateway without pause. The remaining man they roughly stood on his feet and frog-marched him out of the room. Two guards gathered the toolboxes, the wrench and the maul and, as they turned to leave, one said, "Well done. I assume we'll see you back at headquarters to report what just happened here?"

  Lyra nodded, the man saluted and out he went.

  Jenny looked around herself in shock. It had all happened so fast that, if it wasn't for the over-turned cooler, a cracked floor tile, and the small puddle of blood on the floor, she wouldn't have believed it had actually occurred.

  "So much for no physical activity," she murmured to Tidbit. "You never cease to surprise me. Are you OK?"

  "Groga don't taste very good," was all he said, licking the blood off of his paws.

  "Let's see what our friends left us," Nova said, heading for the front door. It was too late to worry about the ruse of the r
ental car. The need for information trumped the need for secrecy. Jenny was relieved, however, that the street seemed to be empty at the moment.

  Out in the driveway was a white panel van with "Jerry's Plumbing, since 1996" painted on the side. The intruders hadn't bothered to lock it, assuming a quick and easy getaway. They had obviously assumed Jenny was alone, with only Tidbit for protection, not counting on his ferocity. They opened the back doors. It was empty. Not a gum wrapper or a pop bottle or even any other tools or equipment. It was spotless.

  Mynn sighed. "They weren't taking any chances. Maybe the forensics guys will have more luck with their toolboxes."

  Before they closed the doors, they checked to see if the keys had been left in the ignition, but they hadn't, and they went back into the house, Jenny's Guards leading the way. This business of body guards going everywhere she went was going to take some getting used to, Jenny thought, but she didn't object. After all, they had just saved her life moments ago and this was only going to get worse. "Girl power," she said to no one in particular and all three of her guards grinned.

  "OK, let's get to headquarters," Jenny said. "It's time we got some questions answered."

  Chapter 26: Q&A

  They arrived at headquarters minutes later and were escorted directly up to the council room. The Councilors were not on the dais. A circle of chairs, one perch and a chaise on the main floor were mostly filled with Earth Guardians, a large Alliance Guard and another uniformed being she did not recognize. There were only two free chairs, one for Jenny and one for Tarafau, so her Guards stood at rest behind her.

  As she sat, she noticed that Ingot seemed more agitated than she had ever seen him. He always had seemed to keep his cool, even when alarm bells went off. Seeing him this way worried her.

  The other two Councilors were not quite as easy to read, although a small rivulet of smoke occasionally escaped Liliath's nostrils.

  "Welcome, Jenny." Ingot said from his seat. "Congratulations on the capture of Groga agents. They will be interrogated by some of our best, and I doubt they can hold out for long. Please recount how this came to pass."

  Jenny looked around the circle. As Ingot had not stood when he had spoken to the assembly, she remained seated and told the gathering about the circumstances of their capture of the three Groga agents and about the MDPs they had found in the shed. If anything, by the time she finished her report, Ingot was even more agitated.

  "This is grave news indeed," he said with a sigh, shaking his head. "But there may be some hope in the MDPs you found. The enemy is moving much faster than we had hoped and it is obvious that the Groga now know where the new Gatekeeper portal is located. We will have to take some additional precautions. I am sorry to tell you that you won't be spending a lot of time in your home for awhile.

  Enemy agents must not see you coming and going. Let them think that you have fled the gate. They will see workmen going in and out, presumably to repair the damage they did to your home. They will make a great show of installing heavy security precautions. We want them to think we are afraid they will try again."

  We ARE afraid they will try again, Jenny thought to herself.

  "For the next little while, you will need to come and go only from the gateways, never out your front door. I would have you work from your gate office, when you are on Earth, or at any of the other gateways. When you were in Puerto Rico, you sent photos to Sam, did you not?"

  Jenny gasped. She had sent photos of her on the mango plantation and in the forests. "I did, but I don't think there was anything in them that would have identified the hacienda or where it was located." She paused, thinking. "There was one photo I took from the balcony. Could your techs look at it and determine if she might be able to locate the hacienda by looking at that photo? It's the only one that had any details that might possibly help her. All she really knew is that I went to Puerto Rico."

  Ingot smiled at her wearily. "I will have them download the photos from your phone, with your permission. Did you take any photos of you and Juan or Luz? We really don't know how much they already know about the other gates on Earth. I would hate to think they might have been exposed to her agents."

  "I would have liked to have had photos of the two of them, but I didn't take any. I thought that would have been a security risk." Arvid nodded and Jenny looked at Juan. His usually cheerful face was somber. "Have you seen anything suspicious around your home?" she asked Juan worriedly.

  "There have been no breaches of security at this point, and you know I have taken precautions. I can see anyone coming from a long way off, due to security cameras along the jungle road and the path leading to the hacienda. My wife's assistants in the mango grove serve a second purpose. They are all ex-military and they go armed. Partially, this is because of the jungle predators who roam in the jungle beyond, but they also serve as security and they know their jobs well. And I must reveal that, as many of you know," glancing at the three councilors, "Luz is not without her own defenses."

  "I am hopeful that there are not enough clues in any of the photos that might help her pinpoint the gateway. But, since we can't know for sure, we will need to add extra security; shields, net sensors and the like," replied Ingot thoughtfully. "We would do the same for the house on Infinity Loop, but there are too many people too close who might cross the boundaries. We will have to get creative. In the meantime, we also need to determine what to do about the MDPs you found, and we need to discover, what, if anything, we can get from the three men you so handily defeated. Is there anything else?"

  He looked around the circle, encouraging anyone who had anything to add to speak up.

  The uniformed being that Jenny had not recognized sent to the group. Now that she looked at him properly, she realized he was like a much enlarged version of Ingot: stocky in build, with a square face and a dark beard…that wiggled? He wasn't quite as tall as Tarafau or Brendan, but Jenny could imagine that face when angry and shivered. "Jenny, I am Gariel. I am the chief of the Alliance Troopers. What do you know of the Queen of the Groga?"

  "Nothing more than we think she's Sneaky Sam's boss."

  He looked puzzled, his beard squirmed more animatedly. "She means Engoza," put in Tarafau.

  He nodded. "The Queen of the Gorga is not a Gorga. No one knows much about her dimension of origin, but the thinking, for now, is that the Gorga may have been taken to her home dimension. We have no clues as to where that may actually be in the gate network or whether that dimension is even in the network at all. Among the infinite number of potential connections, we have a nearly impossible task. We currently have no way of tracing their path unless we get information from those you have captured or from those Burt is tracking. One of the key pieces of information we must obtain is where they are coming from and how they have been able to infiltrate the network to have access to the planets they have raided.

  Engoza is the commander of all of Groga forces and a skilled agent, as you have discovered." He glanced at her forearm. "We are hoping she will slip up, but so far our hope is in vain. Right now, the only strategy we have is to find and capture any agents who may still be on Earth. The agents on your team are even now homing in on the location of what we believe to be their headquarters on Earth and when they find them, we will be ready to assist in capturing them. If at all possible, we need them alive, to interrogate."

  "Lova has instructions to pass anything pertinent directly to the Council and to me." Jenny said, nodding to Lova.

  "We still await news from Burt's team," Lova said. "Last we heard, they were preparing to enter a swampy area in Louisiana. Normally there would be no cell signal there, but the team is equipped with Alliance signal enhancers. We could communicate with them even if they were in a cave deep in the earth or under water. All of their communications devices are shielded, so they shouldn't be able to be detected by the Groga."

  The Councilors nodded to Lova. "It sounds as if everything that can be done is being done by our Earth team," said Ing
ot, approvingly.

  Suddenly Ingot went still, his eyes unfocused. Jenny realized he must be receiving a private mindspeech message.

  He stood. "They have begun to interrogate the one prisoner who is conscious. He is resistant, but they will report when they have anything noteworthy. The one is still unconscious and the one who has so many wounds from Tidbit's claws is in pretty bad shape, but they say he will survive for questioning. I would like to suggest that when they do that, Tarafau be in attendance as Tidbit. The chief guard seems to think this will be an effective way to 'encourage' him to be forthcoming." He grinned at Tarafau wickedly.

  "Wait," said Jenny," Tarafau can become Tidbit away from Earth?"

  "And Tidbit can become Tarafau on Earth, but only in special circumstances. There are many reasons, including his ears and fangs why it would not be politic for him to run around Earth as Tarafau. This is why he is currently only allowed to become Tarafau in the shielded space at Sanglarka and in your dimensional gym. In an extreme emergency in the past, he has changed while he was on Earth, but those transformations were not seen by anyone living," he concluded grimly.

  It seemed there was no end to surprises where Tarafau was concerned, she mused. She tried to imagine Tarafau shopping at her local mall and suppressed a giggle. Controlling her expression, she said, looking at her fellow Earth Guardians. "I think I will stay at Sanglarka for a while, at least until we have a clear path to follow. I will check in at the gate on Infinity Loop from time to time."

  Something occurred to her. "I thought you could just extract information with your ' dastardly alien tech', as Burt puts it. How can the Groga henchman be resisting?"

  Liliath answered. "You have been taught the mind training exercises, yes?"

  Jenny nodded.

  "So have our enemies. Their approach is different, but it has the same effect. The next step in your training will be to learn to close your mind to anyone you don't wish to have access to your thoughts, regardless of the methods they use. This is just one of the mental techniques you will need to learn.