Her sons left the room, and after collecting her thoughts, she called her brother. Almost verbatim, from the beginning to the end, she told him what Stuart had told her.
“Where did he go?” asked Arton.
“I don’t know,” she sobbed, “his phone went dead mid-sentence. Arton, something is terribly wrong. I know it. Stuart sounded bad, and he is not easily shaken. He tried to hide it, but I could tell he was worried, I could hear it in his voice. He said his boss, Donna, and his friend Jay were in shock.
“I want you to pack your things and come to Centoria,” said Arton. “I’ll check into what’s happening in Midmortia. I’ll see you here soon, okay.”
“Stuart will expect me to be here, shouldn’t I stay.”
“He’ll call you, Marie. I think it’s best if you come to Centoria. Come now, okay?”
“Okay, I’ll pack now, we should arrive late tonight.”
After Marie hung up, Arton called Donnally. “Got a moment? he asked.
“Sure, what’s up,” asked Donnally.
“I got a call from my sister Marie. She was out of her mind with worry. Some bizarre things are happening in Midmortia according to her husband, Stuart.” Arton told Donnally what his sister had described and how she sounded as she relayed it.
“That’s crazy alright. What do you want to do?”
“I want to check it out,” replied Arton. “Marie is right about her husband. Stuart is as cool-headed a person as you would ever meet; not prone to panic, ever. What can we do?”
“Sly sent a gunship to the Sote-kiliet to intervene in a disputed Korganraim mining operation on Sentia-4. That’s not far from Mortia. I’ll have them file a change to their flight plan and check it out on their way back. Possibly as early as tonight we could hear something. Normortia was where he called from, right?”
“No, Midmortia,” replied Arton. “Thanks.”
“Not a problem. When I hear from them I’ll let you know what they found.”
Arton hung up his communicator. There was no figuring out or explaining what Marie had told him. At least not until Donnally received a message from their gunship. “Sote-kiliet,” he thought, “that’s a long way out there.” Until that moment, he didn’t realize he hadn’t asked Marie where she was. “If she’s arriving tonight she’s not in the Sote-kiliet, that’s for sure.”
Realizing he could no nothing until he had more information, he decided to take his mind off the issue entirely and have lunch at Krimperdeem’s. He walked up the road, along the Govent Rivulet toward his favorite restaurant, but he couldn’t clear his mind. What his sister had said still bothered him. Stuart’s description of what was occurring on Mortia was… well… crazy.
No other words described it, and the panic in Marie’s voice made it worse. And like her husband, Marie wasn’t the kind to panic.
*****************************************
Stuarts communicator lost its long-range signal as he drove his transport down the main thoroughfare in Midmortia. As he turned on the news hoping to hear an explanation of what was happening, his mind drifted back to his sister. He hoped Marie had called Arton. According to the newscast, whatever was going on wasn’t happening solely in Midmortia. Reports were coming in of similar incidents from cities as far away as Clairdonia and Normortia, at the northernmost tip of the continent.
As he drove, he could see clouds of dust and small bits of debris hovering in the air and being pulled gradually skyward. A quick glance at his rear seat camera confirmed Jay and Donna were still in shock and didn’t understand what was happening. Understanding what was going on seemed to evade him as well, and he wasn’t in shock; at least not yet.
“I’ve made a decision. We’re not going home. We’re going to the air-station,” he told them. Neither one of his passengers responded. “I’m going to get the company’s small cruiser and see what’s going on. I’m taking you with me.” Still, there was no answer from Jay or Donna; not an approval, not a disagreement, nothing. “I hope this isn’t considered kidnapping,” he thought.
Stuart watched chunks of soil and dust along the road being pulled from the ground. They floated into the air and drifted toward the black tear in the sky. He sped up. Ideas about what was happening swirled in his brain but none of them made sense. His most troubling thought begged for an answer, nothing about this is remotely normal or even remotely similar to anything I’ve ever seen or heard of.
“Call corporate terminal,” he said into his communicator. Still no reaction from his passengers buckled in the back seat. “Hello, this is Stuart Devlon with Bordcon, I need our short-range cruiser ready in ten minutes. Yes, ten minutes, it’s an emergency.”
As he tore down the thoroughfare Stuart realized his transport was trying to drift upward. By pitching the front end downward slightly and accelerating, he corrected the drift.
“We don’t have much time,” he thought.
As he made his way down the street, he noticed a woman standing in front of a hair salon. Staring up at the sky, she was transfixed by what she saw. Stuart pulled to the curb.
“Get in,” he yelled.
“Excuse me.”
“Get in,” and he pointed toward the sky, “before we’re sucked into that thing.”
“Right. That wouldn’t do at all,” replied the woman, and she climbed in the front passenger seat.
“Stuart Devlon,” he said, introducing himself as he pulled away.
I’m Gladys, Gladys Whittsner. I popped into town to visit a friend who owns this hair salon, but she wasn’t in today.
“Nice to meet you Gladys, that’s James and Donna in the back.
“Hello, pleasure to meet you.”
There was complete silence in the back seat. Neither James or Donna said a word.
“Forgive them. They’re not being rude. I think they’re probably in shock, and a little disoriented.”
That’s not surprising,” replied Gladys. “It’s not every day a black hole comes by to suck up your planet.”
“Excuse me, did you say a black hole? Where?”
“Yes, I did say black hole. But it’s acting rather odd, isn’t it? I suspect the hole is located on the other side of the gateway.”
“You mean that tear in the sky is a gateway? Gateway to what?” he said waving toward the sky. “Are you suggesting someone or something is doing this intentionally?”
“Yes, and odds are it is someone.”
“Gladys Whittsner. For some reason, I’m familiar with that name. Have we met?”
“Oh, I doubt we’ve met. Where are we headed?” she asked.
“That’s a digger,” said Jay from the back seat as they pulled up to the terminal gate and onto the tarmac.
Stuart noticed the small animal they called diggers, clutching a clod of dirt floating about two feet above the ground. The only thing keeping the clod and the digger from floating away was a single grass runner tethering the clod to the ground. Bits of soil around the root were breaking free. In a few moments, it would drift away to who knows where.
Without thinking, Stuart jumped out of the transport before it settled to its tires, ran to the landscaped area and grabbed the clod. Lowering it closer to the ground, he shook it until the small animal dropped from the clod and darted back into what was left of its burrow. “Good luck,” he said as he darted back to the transport.
“Are you Stuart Devlon.”
“Yes,” he said, flashing his corporate security badge. “Do you mind helping my passengers into the cruiser.”
“You have to come inside and fill out the checkout form and file a flight plan.”
“Is the cruiser fueled up?” asked Stuart.
“Yes. And we stocked it pursuant to the provisions in the Bordcon contract.”
“Great, help me get them into the cruiser and I’ll paper it up inside.”
Gladys and the launch terminal employee helped Stuart lead Donna and Jay to the cruiser and buckled them in. “I’ll be right in,” sai
d Stuart, “I’m going to spin up the engines so I can give them some air while we’re inside.”
He went to the cockpit and noticed the employee didn’t leave but was waiting for him at the exit door. When the engines were running and the air system came on he walked back toward the exit. “Let’s go inside,” he said. As soon as the employee was on the airstair Stuart pulled the exit door closed and locked it.
“Sorry he yelled, I don’t have time to file the paperwork. Send us the forms and an invoice.” He raced down the aisle to the cockpit where Gladys was standing, jumped in the captain’s chair, and revved up the engines.
The launch terminal employee had positioned himself on the ground beside the cruiser waving his hands wildly. Although he had a fair idea what he was yelling, Stuart couldn’t hear him over the engines.
“Well, that’s unnecessary,” he murmured as the employee mouthed a particularly nasty name. Stuart gave him the thumbs up, like he thought the employee was okay with him taking the cruiser. The employee’s yelling and angry facial expressions increased considerably. Stuart pretended not to notice.
“I’m not sure this ship will get us far enough away if that’s your plan,” offered Gladys.
“I’m not either, but it’s all we have at the moment.
A trash can near the entry to the terminal began to float in the air. Stuart looked out the windshield at the terminal employee and pointed to it. The employee ignored his point and continued to yell. Stuart pointed again, this time mouthing something he knew the employee would recognize.
When he turned to see what Stuart was pointing at, and saw the can floating away, he glanced back at the cruiser than bolted into the building. Several minutes later, as he maneuvered the cruiser to the take-off pad his headset buzzed.
“Mr. Devlon, I believe you forgot to file a checkout form and a flight plan,” came a voice clearly from someone at the control desk.
“Sorry, this is an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency, Mr. Devlon. “George said your passengers didn’t appear to be injured.”
“The kind of emergency where I take this cruiser without an hour delay for paperwork. I don’t have an extra hour. And sorry, but George is an idiot. Two of my three passengers are in shock, and you need to tune-in to a local news channel to see what’s going on. This planet is falling apart all around you. I’m going to leave now, with or without your clearance, so it might be best for both of us, and much less paperwork later, if you go ahead and approve my departure.”
“Hold please,” came the reply, then there was complete communicator silence as Stuart prepared for his liftoff. As he finished the checklist for his initial thrust someone from the control desk buzzed him. “You are clear for takeoff Mr. Devlon.”
“They hate paperwork,” he said to Gladys, who had taken the co-captains seat. As the initial thrust pushed him into the air, the engines screamed to generate the force necessary for a vertical takeoff. Rotating the cruiser 32 degrees west, he pushed the thruster levers forward.
Stuart leveled the craft at 1,500 feet, intending to cruise across Midmortia to find out how widespread the local problem was. As he was about to make a second pass across the city a small transport with no one in it, and several grocery store shopping carts, floated by on their way toward the jagged mark in the sky.
His cruiser started to drift upward and he made the necessary corrections to counter the increasing gravitational pull. After the third correction, he realized the force pulling upward toward that black lightning bolt was increasing. “This is a losing battle,” he murmured. There wasn’t any evidence of panic in his voice. Stuart was a cool character.
“It’s probably time to run,” said Gladys. The standard port tuning on this craft won’t generate enough power to fight the increasing gravitational pull coming from that black hole. We don’t have long.”
“You know about engines?” he asked.
“Yes, I’ve accumulated a fair amount of expertise on all sorts of propulsion systems. Our best chance of escape is that way, and fast I think,” she said, pointing in a direction perpendicular to the long axis of the gateway.
Stuart turned the cruiser and pushed the thrusters to maximum. The craft wasn’t designed for interplanetary travel, but he hoped he could fly far enough away to escape the force pulling things toward that black mark. Images from a rear facing camera were being shown on the cockpit’s secondary screen.
What he saw was alarming. Transports and debris of all sorts, chunks of concrete and soil, a constant stream of dust, and an occasional spacecraft that wandered too close to the rift or hadn’t been tethered to the ground properly were all being sucked into the rift.
She is right, he thought, that black mark isn’t just a mark at all. With the magnification of his rear facing camera he could see into the black mark. It’s an opening. He slid the magnification controller to 9X and watched as everything passing through the gateway was reduced to a fine powder. Then, it drifted deeper into the blackness beyond, and out of sight.
Stuart checked his speed again and again. It looked like their plan might work, the instrument panel indicated his speed had started to increase. The black hole behind them was generating some incredible gravitational forces, but they were on the verge of breaking free.
He increased the magnification and watched the secondary monitor as everything imaginable was pulled through the tear in the sky and reduced to dust. How long might it continue he wondered. Then, as the images began to lose much of their definition, he saw them. Space craft were pouring through the rip. Spacecraft like he had never seen before and one of them was incredibly huge.
This wasn’t an astrophysical phenomenon at all. It was an invasion! As he watched, their ship shuddered, the engines went off line then shut down.
“We didn’t make it far enough,” said Stuart. “We’ll be sucked back into the rift.”
“Do you have any emergency suits on board?”
“Just one I think,” replied Stuart.
“One is all I need.”
“It won’t do you any good, the thruster isn’t strong enough to push you beyond that thing’s gravitation pull.”
“I’m not trying to escape. I’m going to adjust the nozzle apertures on those engines and boost their energy output. I hope you have some basic tools onboard.”
“I do. Wait, can you do that? You can boost the power output of the engines so we can get out of here?” he asked
Gladys smiled at the shocked sound in his voice. She got this kind of response often, but never for very long. “I certainly hope so. I’m the engineer who designed their replacement.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
TWO KINDS OF TROUBLE
“Hey Mark, I’m surprised you’re here,” said Denton as Mark pushed through the door of the training room. “I thought you were meeting Sly for breakfast before he leaves for home.”
“Plans changed. Sly isn’t leaving. I had a message from him waiting for me when I woke up this morning. The clerk said it had been in the basket since he came on duty at four am. Sly said something urgent came up and it needed immediate attention. Any idea what that could be?”
“No, but things come up all the time, Mark. We’re involved in a lot of issues across an incredibly large part of space. You ready to spar?”
“I am if you are.”
They took their stances in the middle of the room and clicked their sticks, indicating they were both ready to engage. Denton parried Mark’s first thrust and initiated a response, but Mark was ready. Denton telegraphed his move, dropping the butt of his stick before going high. That slight downward drift signaled Denton’s solar plexus would be wide open.
As soon as he started his movement upward Mark punched him in the midsection. Denton back-peddled to regain his balance, and catch breath. Just as he advanced, Nita pushed open the door and grabbed a stick from the rack, indicating she wasn’t there to watch. They both lowered their sticks and Denton asked if she needed something.<
br />
“Dad cancelled our brunch meeting,” said Nita. “He didn’t offer an explanation other than Sly asked him to attend an emergency meeting. Wasn’t Sly supposed to leave this morning?”
“Sly cancelled his breakfast meeting with Mark this morning before anyone was out of bed. I understand; the man is involved in everything. But dad never cancels unless something bad is going on and it needs immediate attention. And dad never keeps secrets from us. Something’s not right,” finished Denton.”
“We should snag dad this afternoon. Let’s drag him to Krimperdeem’s and see if he’ll open up. In the meantime, how about some two on one practice?”
Nita pulled a second fighting stick out of the rack near the door. Twirling it in her left hand and around her back to her right hand, she brought it to a fighting position in front of her torso, and charged Denton before either of them could respond. The first lick was hers. It was then Denton noticed she was wearing sparring pads under her clothes. Nita smiled and motioned Mark to join the fray.
Mark found defending himself against two attackers in stick fighting wasn’t much different than the martial arts techniques he and Blackie had practiced in their backyard. The difference wasn’t that Blackie and Mark used different sticks, it was they often practiced with real machetes when no one else was home. They wrapped their arms and legs and torso with old pieces of carpet to simulate the pads Blackie wore when he trained at the base. Surprisingly, only a few serious cuts happened, and both he and Mark had managed to retain all their appendages.
After Nita defended against Denton and Mark for five minutes they took a short break and started again. Each of them defended several times. Once, when Mark was defending, he landed another strong shot to Denton’s midsection. When Denton bent over, Mark pushed his back down and rolled over him – back to back - landed a blow on Nita’s shoulder pad. As his feet hit the floor and promptly retreated. The key to fighting two people was to keep moving, and to line up the attackers if possible so only the one in front could engage.
Before finishing their workout, Mark announced he would show them his best move against two attackers. Quickly he moved and maneuvered around the mat, constantly looking for the right opportunity when he was face to face with Nita and Denton was right behind her. Then, without warning, he turned and ran out the door. When he poked his head back in the sparring room, both Nita and Denton were laughing uncontrollably.
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