One Minute to Midnight

by Steve Lang

  "Well, the other three won't have much to do with you, but I've always had a soft spot for children." The front face sighed.

  "Tell us what we have to do, sir, and we'll be on our way in no time." Doug said.

  "The way you seek is through that cave. There is a time portal, an anomalous rift, opened a thousand years ago between your world and ours. It is a time abnormality that will transport you to the last place you came from, but it is guarded by an imp." Front face said.

  "Yes! The imp. Kixle will take care of them, and then maybe he’ll share the meat with us!" Rear face said.

  "Would you please calm down? We are not eating them. I can still feel the heartburn from the last humans." Said Left face.

  "Go through the cave, pass the imp who guards the portal, and go home. Do not come back here again." Front face said. The giant turned to go, and as he did they could see the twisted, gnarled faces that were hidden from them previously. The other ancients had crooked noses, beady, hate-filled eyes, and rows of sharp teeth, yellowed from age and neglect.

  Jimmy reached in his pocket for the vial and thought about what Ignacious had said about drinking it when the time was right.

  "Let's go, Jimmy. The sooner we get this over with the better I'll feel." Doug said as they watched the giant slip back into its dark hole.

  The cave was only a short distance away, and since they no longer required his services, their driver turned his cart and went back the way they had come. When Doug and Jimmy got there, they found a torch on the wall inside. Beside it was a box of long wooden matches, and oil soaked rags to wrap around the torch. Doug fashioned their light source best he could, and then lit it, smiling down at Jimmy once their path was illuminated.

  "See, nothing to it." Doug said.

  They walked into the cave that stretched far into the mountain. They wound around several times before ending at a blue-green wall of light. It swirled like smoke, and drew them to it as they heard whispers from the edge of time speak to them with a gentle allure. It was a hypnotic drone that took them off their guard, and that was when they heard the shuffle of feet behind them, and Doug was suddenly raised from the ground by his neck. Jimmy turned to see a gigantic devil with two sharpened black horns jutting from both sides of his head.

  "Put me down!" Doug shouted.

  "Gladly!" The imp hissed, and threw Doug against a wall.

  Jimmy stood with his hand on the vial, frozen, terrified of the monster before him, but knew he had to move. This place, this time, or world, allowed Jimmy to think faster and more like a much older child, and he suspected that if he did nothing his grandfather would be dead soon. He took the vial, and pulled out the small cork, upending it in his mouth as the bitter crimson liquid rolled down his throat. He winced at the taste, but before the last drop was in his mouth, he began to feel a superhuman strength surge through him. Jimmy was suddenly changing, growing. Hair sprouted on his arms and face, and his lower jaw extended by three inches. His hands hooked into sharp claws and he grew long fur-covered ears and a long tail. The imp missed all of this because his attention was focused on Doug and where he would kick him next. The transformation complete, Jimmy let out a long, low growl. He snarled as white drool pooled around his powerful clawed feet. The boy had become something more powerful than he had ever dreamed, and as he felt the hot rage of bloodlust run through him, he howled inside the cave and demanded the attention of their adversary for the first time.

  "So, you want to kick an old man?" Jimmy barked. His muscled arms rippled with acid filled veins as he flexed. "Get some exercise, imp. Come kick me!"

  Kixle turned around with an evil grin on his face, and as he did, five little balls popped off of his skin and rolled along the floor like marbles. They each unrolled and became duplicates of Kixle. Jimmy leaped at Kixle with his claws bared. The imp had not been prepared for such an attack, now he was on his back with a werewolf on his chest, punching his head into the floor. Jimmy tore through the imp's robust shoulder muscles with his two-inch razor sharp canine teeth, and disabled one of his arms before the imp tossed him aside, rolling to his feet.

  "You have some strength my young friend, I think I'll pay Ignacious and his family a visit tonight and thank him for giving you that potion. That’ll be after I kill you and the old man, of course. Boy's, let's get him." Kixle told his clones, which were now full-sized.

  One of the clones ran forward, but Jimmy was ready and jumped into the air with his feet forward to kick the demon in his chest while grabbing hold of its horns and ripping them from his head. The horns were their source of power, a fact that Jimmy learned purely by accident. He attacked two of the others, running at him by stabbing down with a horn in each hand into the space between their necks and shoulder. Then he ripped their horns off with lightning fast movements. He was supernatural, a supreme being, doling out harsh punishment. He saw three moves ahead of his opponents. He wanted to stay like this forever. Immaculate, horrifying, the embodiment of raw power. And as he tore through the final clone, Jimmy felt the anger, hatred, and fire of the universe surging through his boiling blood. He saw planets explode in his mind, he witnessed stars supernova in deep space as he lost himself in the action of killing. The pained screams of a million soldiers dying in a thousand wars echoed within him as he stood before the wounded imp.

  "You can't hide behind your minions anymore, imp." Jimmy growled.

  "I'll help you get home, if you spare my life." Kixle said.

  "You are in no position to bargain demon."

  A portal opened in the cave wall, filled with illuminated green swirling clouds. Through the other side they could hear birds singing in the trees.

  "Oh, but I am. You see, you must use this talisman to pass through the gate or you'll be ripped apart by the gravity of space-time." Kixle held up a small silver orb with a ring around it, resembling Saturn. It dangled it in his hand.

  "We need that to get through, or we get ripped apart? I don't believe you." Jimmy said. Doug was balled up on the floor with two broken ribs and a busted nose.

  "There are many pathways. Good luck finding the right one without me." Kixle grinned. His damaged arm hung limp.

  Jimmy considered his offer for a moment, rubbing his furry chin with his right hand. He looked over at his grandfather lying on the ground, and turned back to the imp. He nodded his head, and stepped forward as if to shake the imp’s hand, but instead grabbed his right horn with his right hand and used his left to hook the demon under his chin with his iron claw.

  "I don't need your permission to leave this land!"

  "No!" Kixle screamed.

  Jimmy severed the imp’s windpipe, and with another swipe he removed his adversary’s head, tossing it into the greenish void. It dematerialized in front of Jimmy as Kixle's body fell to the floor, the talisman in his hand. Jimmy picked it up.

  "Come on, grandpa. Let's go home." Jimmy was beginning to transform back into a little boy again, but he still had enough strength to pick his grandfather up and walk through the portal.

  Once on the other side, the memory of their adventure was lost instantaneously, like shadows in the fog as soon as they crossed over. While Jimmy and Doug felt as if they had been gone only a day, a search party had been looking for them for over two weeks. They could never explain what had happened to them, or the strange outfit Jimmy was wearing when they returned. The clothing Jimmy had been given by Ignacious would stay hidden in a drawer, forgotten for another fifteen years. One day, after Jimmy completed his college degree and was moving out of his old room, he rediscovered the relics, but he could not remember where they came from, or from whom he had received the small shirt and pants. The fabric was something he had never seen before, and when he showed the clothes to a Dave Schellenbacher, a friend who worked in textile fiber forensics, he would discover that the fibers of his childhood loaner clothes were derived from a plant that had not existed on earth for over thirty-five thousand years. Their brief disappearance was ruled just an
other unsolved mystery of the Watertown Vortex.

  stranger in a strange land

  Jared Talbert and his crew of Space Marines are

  on a mission to recover precious minerals, when something goes terribly wrong.

  Jared stared at the blinking blue dot on his monitor with interest, and from the signature on his screen, he knew they were close to their goal. Captain Dwight Rogers, of the freight ship Celestine, had ceased communication with home in one final abrupt transmission, which stated that he had found a new planet. Sipping on his tenth cup of coffee for the day, Jared wondered about the various causes that would have stopped the vessel from reaching home, when it had been due to return over a year ago. Was there hostile alien life on the planet? Had space debris or a chunk of meteor hit the Celestine and knocked it out of commission?

  Jared’s crew fought against tedium with a game of poker at the dinner table, with little conversation. Five months in space stuck together in a tin can had killed most of the small talk. Space was vast and miraculous, and once outside their home solar system, boring. If one stared out into the void long enough, they would experience space madness and unravel the mission, so cards and video games were somewhat comforting as they traveled through the cosmos. The USS Rapier had passed Neptune weeks before, and as the blue planet whizzed by, the crew had shared a unified sense of loneliness. It was the first time any of them had been so far from home. The missing cargo ship was reported to be loaded with precious minerals bound for the Deep Space Exploration Corporation.

  DSEC was rumored to have needed these precious metals for a top-secret space weaponization program in development by a joint task force of technology and weapons manufacturers on Mars and Earth. Jared had seen the space-time gate NASA had developed, before DSEC took over the operation, and knew private contracting firms were transporting ancient high technology from the red planet back to Texas through the gate. It made him nervous, this clandestine collusion, and he often wondered if any of it was for the betterment of mankind.

  "Captain, you’ve been staring at that monitor for an hour. What are you looking at?" Sgt. Will Perry asked. He was laying a card down, and all heads turned in Jared’s direction.

  "The blip is back. I think we found the cargo ship, but it’s near an unknown planet, and it’s not moving." Jared replied.

  "How far out?" Staff Sergeant Ty Williams asked. He was the ship’s navigational engineer, and walked over to look at the screen.

  The little blue blip was just outside the orbit of a large planet.

  "Captain, it looks like we can be there in less than a day without the use of our warp drive." Ty said.

  "Good, let’s get in, get the shipment or rescue the derelict craft, and get out. I want to be home by next Christmas." Jared said. He turned to the crewmembers, who were all nodding with emphatic agreement.

  "Longest I’ve been out here before is nine months, and I thought that was long. We've been out eleven this trip." Gunnery Sergeant Blythe Delgado said.

  Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and although she was a Marine, and they were all on a military assignment, it was still difficult to ignore that she was a beautiful woman, and married. The men did their best to pretend Sergeant Delgado was just one of the guys, but many cold showers ensued during their journey.

  "I hear that Gunny! Let’s get this done. We'll slip into hyper-sleep on the return and won't feel a thing." Jared replied.

  Four hours passed, and then a tiny white speck appeared in the distance, and even farther beyond it was a bright star illuminating it from behind. The blip got closer, and the planet on Jared’s monitor grew larger.

  "That thing is enormous! It has to be ten times bigger than Earth." Jared said.

  "You think there’s anyone on it?" Blythe asked. Jared shrugged.

  "We’re not reading any life signs coming from the planet, and this craft can detect life from a thousand miles away. It looks like a giant ball of ice." Ty said. He was looking at another smaller screen with the planet centered on it, magnified by five.

  "Wait, something’s floating around out there guys, a cylinder of some kind. Hey, it’s the Celestine!" Ty yelled.

  The crew breathed a sigh of relief. The closer they came the more visible Celestine appeared against the backdrop of the giant white planet.

  "She's derelict." Jared whispered.

  "Maybe we can hail the captain on com." Ty said. Jared turned to him and then back to his control panel.

  "Celestine, this is the USS Rapier, do you copy?" Silence followed. "I repeat, Celestine, this is the USS Rapier, do you copy." More silence.

  "You may be right, Cap'." Blythe said. They were now within a hundred yards of the vessel, and could see a large, gaping hole in her hull. Small bars of gold floated aimless in the vacuum of space.

  "There must have been an attack of some kind." Master Sergeant Dale Wayne said. He was looking at a monitor, and zooming in on the derelict ship. "It looks like there's some devices out there as well. Communication satellites, maybe?"

  "Maybe, but we'd better be on alert..." Jared said. Before he could finish, the side of their vessel was rocked by an unexpected blast coming from the direction of the planet.

  "What the hell!" Blythe screamed.

  A fire had erupted in the kitchen, and the artificial gravity was knocked out of commission, rendered inoperable by the last blast. All on board began to float as balls of fire bobbed around the bridge. Jared looked at the control console and saw that the craft was not just leaking a little bit of oxygen; it was escaping at a high rate and the fire was using up the rest of it. Another shot slammed into the Rapier, sending Ty reeling onto their table. A fireball was floating through his area and landed on his hair, causing the Staff Sergeant to burst into flames as he floated through space. Jared donned his helmet and turned his oxygen tank on.

  "Get your helmets..." Another shot blew a hole through the side of the Rapier. Jared grabbed ahold of his seat, and strapped into it a split second before a large chunk was blasted off the ship, opening a human-sized hole in the side. It sucked Ty Williams, Blythe Delgado, and Dale Wayne out into the frozen hell of space, screaming as they disappeared.

  Moments later, as the pressurization dissipated from the USS Rapier, Jared sat in his captain’s chair stone still and terrified, as his friends drifted about like frozen refuse in the vacuum of space.

  "Get it together, Jared. You’re still alive." He told himself as he calmed his breathing. "The lander!"

  He remembered the planetary lander that was attached to their ship. It was his only way out of a similar fate to his crew’s, and might get him to the planet surface. The lander was sitting in a small hangar bay through a closed hatch at the back of the ship. His O2 display read forty-five minutes, and it would take twenty to ready the lander.

  "Move Jared." He said to himself.

  He unbuckled and pulled his floating body through the wrecked hulk of his ship. The firing from the satellites had ceased after his crew was killed, and the onboard fire was out since there was no more oxygen to feed it. He punched his security code into the door to the narrow tunnel connecting The Rapier to the R2-4 Planetary Lander. Once inside, he secured the hatch and began to flip switches, holding his breath before flipping each one, certain that they would error out and he would be doomed. A few moments later, the cabin pressure was solid and all systems were functioning in the three-man lander, and he was ready to go. The Rapier was drifting toward the Celestine at a high rate, and soon they would collide. Jared pressed a button labeled DETACH CRAFT and for the first time since he got into the lander, a button failed to function.

  "Shit!" Jared yelled. He pressed the button again, but still nothing. "You son of a…!" He yelled. The light blinked on and he felt a jolt as the R2-4 PL disconnected from the Rapier.

  Thrusters ignited behind him, and as Jared steered his emergency craft toward the planet, he hit the frozen body of Ty Williams staring unblinking into his former crewmate's glassy, lifeless
eyes. Ty looked more like a wax statue in a museum than a human now, and it both fascinated and terrified Jared at the same time. Ty’s body bounced away from the ship, and as he disappeared the massive planet below began to come closer. Jared flew past a huge debris field of satellites, armed with cannons. Many of them were destroyed, but some gleamed with shiny chrome exterior armor, and seemed to be tracking him as he passed by, but never fired at him.

  "Much obliged, boys." Jared mumbled. Why had they spared him? Some questions were better left alone, and he concentrated on the task at hand.

  The planet before him looked like a giant ball of ice, and his onboard sensors displayed no signs of life on the ground, but there was an atmosphere with breathable air. The R2-4 PL had been constructed like a flying saucer, with a three hundred sixty degree translucent metallic window.

  "Alone in space is really alone. Jesus!" Jared said to himself.

  To the right, he noticed a large patch of green and brown on the planet surface and in the center of this landmass rising high into the sky was a tower. At first Jared thought it might have been a mountain, but the symmetry was too perfect for it to be a naturally made structure. He turned toward it, in the hope that there might be people that could help him get back home again.

  "That's viewable from space? It must look massive from the ground." Jared said to himself.

  As he descended into the large planet's atmosphere, a piece of orbiting debris about the size of a small car slammed into the side of his vehicle, causing him to spin out of control through the clouds and into the sky above a large glacial area of the planet. He had been knocked off course by about ten miles, and when he regained control of the craft Jared was able to crash land into a massive snow bank. The artificial gravitational field inside the R2-4 PL kept Jared from being torn apart from the impact when the craft slammed into the ground. He looked around after his initial shock wore off, and realized he was in a frozen wasteland. Large ice formations jutted from the surface, and big white snowflakes began to fall on his window, quickly blocking his vision.