by C. R. Asay
I sensed it. The valve he was referring to. Unfortunately the valve included a giant hole in my shoulder that I was far from able to patch at the moment.
You stupid child, growled the voice—louder and stronger.
I felt something akin to a switch being flipped, and the electricity stopped its mad steeplechase. The world was too dark. I was very cold, but my muscles were at least still. Rain pattered on my head.
Lightning flashed across the faces of Thurmond and Rannen.
“Whoa,” I breathed out. “That was weird.”
“Damn, Rose,” Thurmond said. Rannen almost smiled.
My vision adjusted. At least it wasn’t quite so dark any more. Hoth held his wrist to his chest, his fingers curled across his palm.
“Officiate Lafe needs her now, Marshal Rannen,” Hoth sounded winded.
“In a minute,” Thurmond snapped over his shoulder.
“No. Now!”
Something white flashed in Deputy Hoth’s hand. A warning caught in my throat as he jabbed the weapon into Thurmond’s neck.
“Get out of the way,” Hoth snarled.
Thurmond flinched. He raised his hands and got slowly to his feet.
“Deputy Hoth, this is contrary to our laws.” Rannen was up now also.
“What’s the matter, Rannen? Losing your edge?”
“We don’t need an edge when we abide by the Rethan standard.” Rannen’s voice was cool.
“The Rethan standard doesn’t apply to them.”
“These two have been cooperative since we arrived at the camp. There’s no need for your weapon.”
“Cooperative. Is that what you call what they did?”
“They were antagonized.”
“The officiate needs inmate two-three-six right now and if I recall, this one is expendable.”
“Holster your weapon!” Marshal Rannen ordered.
Deputy Hoth looked surprised. He glared at Rannen for another moment, and then lifted the weapon from Thurmond’s neck with a reluctant jerk. Thurmond rubbed at the spot on his neck but didn’t move otherwise. Rannen drew himself up to his considerable height.
“Now then. I will discuss an exit strategy with her friend, if you can manage to get Kris Rose to the officiate without another incident.”
Deputy Hoth’s lip curled, but he retreated. His weapon disappeared in his pocket or holster, or wherever he kept it when it wasn’t at Thurmond’s head.
Rannen followed him with his eyes. “Do you think you can handle that?”
“I can handle it!”
“Good.” Rannen stepped over to me. He held out a hand, his face gentle and expectant. “We do need your help, Kris. In the meantime I’ll work with your comrade on an exit for the both of you.”
I swallowed, hesitated, and then took his hand. He put his other hand around my waist and hoisted me to my feet. I blinked the rain out of my eyes, swaying but standing.
“Rose?” Thurmond took my arm.
I couldn’t look at him. My embarrassing and downright sinister moments were stacked precariously high. A wrong look from Thurmond was sure to topple any of my remaining dignity. And even now, among alternate-dimensional aliens, injuries, and imminent death, it somehow still mattered what he thought.
“I’ll be right back,” I mumbled, and pushed past Thurmond.
I weaved toward the center of the camp. The adrenaline seemed to be wearing off, because my energy and clarity of thought wavered. I focused on the silver plates of the portal shimmering with every flash of lightning and the officiate standing next to the southernmost leg.
Lightning illuminated each drop of rain in brilliant white. Static on a television screen. Uncontrolled chaos. The Rethans had piled their metal crates not far from the portal: the large ones two or three high in several different clumps, the smaller ones in short pyramids. The crackling chatter of the mingling Rethans made the air itself seem electrically charged—an assessment not too far off considering the storm.
They quieted as I approached, conversations ending with a sharp look in my direction. Feet stopped mid step, and hand gestures hung forgotten in the air. The occasional Rethan flinched out of my way, but other than their eyes following my every step they might have been part of the desert.
At the sudden silence, the officiate looked up from a glowing, dripping screen lying on her arm. Her eyes went directly to mine, and then she glanced at her troops.
“Get back to work!”
The Rethans jumped. In a flurry of movement and noise, their tasks were resumed, their conversations remembered. I slumped onto a single crate a few feet from the officiate, thankful for even that much of a luxury. Deputy Hoth arrived. She spoke before he could.
“That will be all, Deputy. I’ll take it from here.”
“But, Officiate, the government soldiers—”
“Are on their way. Yes, Boderick already informed me. Go help Marshal Rannen.”
Hoth gave me one more dark look before striding away. The officiate’s fingers flew across the screen, flicking water this way and that, her eyes glowing in its light. I rose a little out of my hunch to get a better look. Whatever the thing was looked very twenty-first century Earth to me.
“I thought we were in the Jurassic era compared to you guys,” I said.
Officiate Lafe huffed but didn’t say anything immediately. She opened a panel on the leg of the tower, just to the left of the portal plates. She pressed her palm to a bright blue pad of light and waited while it scanned her hand.
“Our technology doesn’t work well in this dimension. We’ve assembled what we need from your primitive equipment to create a Third Dimension border.”
The enormous armadillo plates pulsed with a faint blue light, turning the officiate into a silhouette. I put my hand in my pocket and rubbed the coin with my thumb. What would she say if she knew I had this rare dimensional catapult? Would I suddenly become unnecessary and expendable? I tightened my hand around it and kept my mouth shut.
The officiate handed the screen over her shoulder to Deputy Boderick, who had magically appeared to retrieve it.
“Here, finish up the coding for the first five,” she said without looking at him. Boderick vanished again. She clasped her hands behind her back and turned to face the increasing glow of the portal plates. “Inmate two-three-six, I know we have not gotten off on the right foot in either dimension, but our survival as well as yours depends on your cooperation right now.”
I didn’t say anything, although I might have nodded if she’d have bothered to look at me.
“The storm is putting out a great deal of electricity,” she said. As if to prove her point a jagged shard of lightning split the sky, making her hair look like liquid metal. “Can you feel it? Have you been able to absorb any since your injection?”
“Yeah, I had a whole bunch about ten minutes ago. But that nasty, little deputy with the ponytail got a little handsy, and I had to use it to volt him into the next dimension.”
She did a snazzy, Rethan-style about face. “You what?”
I stared her down. “Don’t worry, it’s starting to come back.”
“Starting to come back?” She massaged her throat. “You know you’re powering a portal, not a vacuum, right?”
“I’ll manage.”
“Fine,” she snapped, and was about to continue but I cut her off.
“Uh, Officiate.” I chewed my lip and she gave an impatient shrug. “You seem to know everything that’s going on around here.” She gave no indication that flattery affected her. “I was just wondering if you’ve ever heard of Benjamin Rose?”
“Benjamin Rose?” Her tone was sharp and surprised. She did know something! “Of course I know of Benjamin Rose. Now concentrate on the—”
“Wait, that’s it?”
“We don’t have time for this, inmate.”
“Rose. My name is Rose,” I snapped.
Her face was hard. After a moment she blew out a breath and unclenched her jaw. “Rose,�
�� she conceded. “Yes, I know of Benjamin Rose. As far as I know he was last seen on Retha. Now, really—”
“Recently? I mean, when? Did you see him?” I couldn’t keep the excitement from bubbling out.”
The officiate’s eyes hardened. “I have had no contact with Benjamin Rose, and only know him from gossip and rumor.”
“What rumors? Just tell me what you know.”
“No.” Her answer was nonnegotiable.
“But—”
“I said no.” She pressed two fingers to her eyes, took a breath, and then fixed me with a stern stare. “How about this . . . Rose, do your part to get us through this, and I’ll give you what little information I possess.” With that the conversation was over. “Now concentrate. Feel the currents and draw them toward your body.”
“I don’t need a lesson in controlling the electricity in my dimension.” The words came out snottier than intended, in a downright bitter wave of malice I should’ve seen coming. The officiate clacked her teeth together.
It actually wasn’t true. I didn’t have the first idea what I was doing. Electrocute a weasely First Lieutenant? Check. Throw a volt out of desperation? Check, check, check. Power a portal?
“Just tell me what to hold so I can charge the stupid thing,” I said. My eyes pricked with frustrated tears and I swiped rainwater from my face to hide them.
“Have it your way. Over here.”
Getting up from the crate required willpower I didn’t know I possessed, and thirty seconds or so to clear the wooziness from my head before I dared take a step. The officiate waited patiently. Once I was successfully standing, she gestured to two coils of metal below the panel that had scanned her hand. Tesla coils? Slinkies, maybe? She said they were using Earth technology. The coils pulsed with a bright blue light, surging a faint ripple through the portal plates. Thick cables ran from the coils, rising to the cables near the top of the tower. On a normal day I could see how it would provide the portal with enough energy to send Rethans across several dimensions.
“So I hold them, or . . . ?”
Officiate Lafe stared at me, unspeaking, her face tight. A flash of movement, a glint of silver, and my left hand was captured between her fingers. I felt a sting on either side of my hand. It didn’t hurt, at least not compared to getting shot, but I yanked my hand away.
“What’d you do that for?”
“Currents flow better through broken skin.”
“Broken like my shoulder?”
“The currents go where you tell them to.”
“No, they won’t.” I held my pierced hand close to my body. The lightning illuminated a small bead of blood on either side. I was imagining all the power escaping through the cannonball sized wound in my shoulder compared to her little pinpricks.
Lafe flipped a sharp silver instrument between fingers. Her lips were thin. “Your injury shouldn’t cause a problem,” she said, reading my mind. “We can deal with that in a moment if you would—”
“Seriously? You have super healing powers? Because I’m not going to lie, that would—”
“If we need to we can use some non-conducting material to fool your body into thinking the only open skin are those points on your hands,” she paused. “I can’t heal your injury. That’s Thirteenth Dimension power.”
“Oh.” The small tremor of hope that I might not die on this Godforsaken, muddy hill washed away as quickly as the rain washed the beads of blood from my hand. I lifted my right hand as far as my injury would allow and Officiate Lafe pricked both sides without apology.
“Place your fists within the coils, and open your hands wide so you are touching as much of the metal as possible. Then simply release the charge within your body through your hands. You can manage that, right?”
“Sure.” I didn’t move. “If you get me that non-whatever-it-is material for my shoulder. You can manage that, right?”
We stared at each other in the pulsing, blue light. If my face looked anything like hers, this was a battle for the record books.
“Just put your hands in the coils,” she finally said, and marched away.
I didn’t watch where she was going, instead dropping to my knees with a sigh. Water saturated the already wet lower half of my pants. An exhausted ache shivered through me.
I needed to grab my right hand with my left to be able to place it into the coil, moronic invalid that I was, before jamming my left hand in the other coil.
Something cold and heavy slapped onto my shoulder. I grunted, raising rain-bleared eyes to Officiate Lafe. She adjusted a bright white swatch of non-conducting fabric and stepped back.
I closed my eyes and tried to wipe away the tension and fear, the debilitating pain and trauma. I tried to distance myself from the booming thunder and the drenching rain and focus on the currents flowing through my body. I was surprised at the masses of electricity I’d accumulated since volting Deputy Hoth. They crackled to life all along my nervous system, racing across the nerves like copper wires. Shivery threads of current made their way at my urging toward my hands. They tried to make a rapid and painful exit through the entrance wound in my shoulder, hardening for a moment where I imagined the bullet was lodged. The electricity pooled against the Rethan fabric, splintering pain into the damaged flesh. I sagged against the tower, my forehead coming to rest against the cold wet metal. I bit my tongue to suppress a whimper.
It was only with extreme concentration that I forced the mass to unravel and work its way down my fingertips. A burst of burning power exploded from my hands in much larger amounts than I thought the tiny pinpricks of broken skin could accommodate.
Once the flow of electricity started the coils drew the energy away, sucking it from my body as neatly as slurping liquid through a straw. A loud, whirring hum pulled me out of my focus. Bright blue light penetrated my eyelids. I fluttered them open, squinting into a dazzling array of zapping energy. Currents bounced in diagonally jerking masses across the opening, going from one plate to another until they created a solid-looking screen of light. The screen brightened at the edges and expanded into a perfect circle.
Through the electrical screen, I could see a landscape so dissimilar in geography to the one on which I knelt that it might as well be a different planet. Everything appeared smooth and solid, made of shining stone or metal—had to be metal, I concluded—and was housed in an enclosed arena of some sort giving no evidence of what might lay beyond.
My limbs trembled. My mind muddied. I collapsed with a watery squelch, and my limp hands slid from the coils. I leaned my shoulder against the leg of the tower, the peel of an orange, every nutritional bit extracted to power the monstrous display of light before me. My lips tingled in an I-need-oxygen sort of way, but I couldn’t seem to get air any farther than the very top of my lungs. A slow and certain suffocation I didn’t have enough energy to prevent. I should’ve given her the coin and taken my chances with her good will.
Officiate Lafe stood over the top of me, her focus on the hand-scanning panel. She didn’t bother to look at me or offer any gesture of appreciation. Her fingers brushed across her reacquired monitor and adjusted something near the panel. I didn’t expect a party or tears of gratitude, but was a murmured thank you too much to ask for? If I’d had even a spark of energy I would have given her a matching scorch mark for her other shoulder.
“That’s it, right?” I asked, hoping.
“Not quite.”
“I charged your portal. What more do you need?”
“I need you to be quiet while I finish this.”
The energy of holding my hands in my lap became too much, and I let them drop to the wet ground. Cool rain hammered on my head. Water drizzled through my hair and ran down my back. The night deepened as the sun set, the storm no longer the only thing making the Sonoran Desert dark. Rethans splashed around with white-booted feet doing their unknown jobs. More seemed to be congregating closer to the portal, speaking to each other in soft, lighting tones. An eerie cacophony.<
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I would have given anything to be sitting on the back porch at home, eating watermelon with my dad and watching the deer scamper through the back field. The air at home always seemed to be the right temperature, the setting sun giving off a dazzling array of Technicolor brush strokes. We would spit melon seeds across the lawn in a brilliantly pointless battle of aim and distance.
A shudder brought me back to the miserable present. My eyes focused, unfocused, and then unscrambled two figures from the rain. Thurmond and Marshal Rannen walked side by side, speaking to one another like comrades rather than prisoner and warden. Thurmond halted, staring open-mouthed at the portal, and then hurried to catch up with Rannen. Rannen carried an extra-large crate, and he set it down on top of the crate I’d been sitting on earlier.
My camouflage must have been doing a supreme job, because without so much as a glance in my direction Rannen unlatched the lid of the crate, and Thurmond helped him lift the lid to the ground. The brilliant light from the portal illuminated rain-spattered variations of the unusual snakelike weapons with which the Rethans had threatened us. Most were small, the ones that wrapped around your wrist and fit into the palm of your hand. Several others were only slightly smaller than my own M-16, but looked more like a twisting coil of white stone than an actual weapon.
“What’s the range on these smaller ones?” Thurmond asked. He glanced uncomfortably over his shoulder at the portal. The light turned his face pasty.
“On Retha it depends on the amount of electricity you can draw from your body, but on Earth we need to depend on the temporary charge.” Rannen picked up a weapon, “See, here’s the charge indicator. This charge is nearly gone, but you could still get up to a hundred meters for a stunning shot. Fifty meters if you want to kill.”
“Only one shot?”
“For this one yes, but look here. This one has a higher charge. If you leave it on stun, and keep the shot close, you should be able to get as many as five shots. This one,” he held up the longer weapon. “No, you’d get only a single shot with this one.”