“We are idiots then, Nancy,” Grayson said. “Welcome aboard and glad to have you. What’s this signal, then?”
“What? And ruin the surprise?” Nancy replied. She crawled closer to the desk, so she could see better. “Pay attention, you guys are not going to want to miss this.”
“Noooo!” Ian screamed and went running across the room.
Lyra watched him lower his body at Aquila and leap. In any other circumstance, it would have been a textbook, takedown tackle. In this case, Ian went screaming right through her, landing awkwardly on the tile floor several feet past her.
Ian did manage to break her concentration though, even if he hadn’t physically affected her.
Instead of striking, Aquila leaned forward and whispered in Lyra’s ear, “There’s no one to save you now.” The words buzzed and shocked her senses.
Lyra noticed, especially close up, that Aquila’s colors were deeper, her voice had more volume, and she seemed to command a more physical presence. She was getting stronger fast. Soon it could be too late, even if the others somehow managed to get the power turned off.
As if to prove a physical point, Aquila put a hand on Lyra’s cheek. Her hand felt cold, and shocked her, but it was definitely real. “Such a shame. If you weren’t so stubborn I might have let you spend eternity with Ian and me.”
“No thanks, I was never very good as a third wheel. Besides, you can’t have him.”
“Says who?” Aquila asked.
“Says me,” Callista said, blasting Aquila from across the room. This time, the beam emanating from Callista’s hand was red. Aquila was knocked several feet backward.
Lyra, still bound by the rope, tried to squirm out of the way. Unfortunately, Aquila recovered even quicker than she did last time.
“Nice try,” Aquila said to Callista, standing back up. “Looks like your batteries are running down, though. Got anything else?”
Callista rushed her, fangs out. She was so frighteningly fast that Lyra recoiled. In the end, though, it came to nothing. Aquila threw her across the room again with a flick of her wrist, and this time, Callista’s hands were bound to the back wall with the glowing rope.
Then Aquila pointed at Ian, and he was thrown and lashed to the wall as well.
That left just Lyra and Aquila. Lyra stopped trying to get away, there wasn’t any point to it anymore.
“Any clever last words?”
Lyra thought about it. “Hey, at least my death isn’t going to boost your ratings.”
“No,” Aquila said, “it won’t help me, but it won’t help you either. You missed my earlier demonstration,” she said, indicating the dead soldier off to the side, “but death by digitization doesn’t really work without the internet. So, you won’t go into the physical or the digital world. You’ll just float alone forever, out in space, in between worlds.”
“Ian,” Lyra asked, her voice cracking despite her attempt to steady it, “is that true?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Why didn’t you warn me earlier?”
“I tried,” he said, “it’s not like any of this is in my control. I honestly thought you were going to save me.”
“Me too. I’m sorry, Ian. Goodbye. I love you.” Lyra decided to give Astrid what she wanted. She closed her eyes.
“No!” Ian screamed. “I love her, Aquila. And if you do this, I will spend the rest of eternity finding a way to kill you.”
“Fine,” Aquila said with a wave of her hand. “You can follow your girlfriend into empty space.”
17
Nancy, Grayson, and Gorb held their breath waiting for the signal. They heard a commotion and followed the gaze of the soldiers down the hall to Astrid.
Grayson gasped.
“I knew you’d like that,” Nancy smirked.
Astrid was dressed as a cephalopod dominatrix. She slithered down the hallway to a chorus of whistles.
“Hi there, boys. Anybody off duty?”
The soldiers were clearly interested, but none of them were willing to leave their post.
“This was the signal?” Gorb asked. “I gotta say, I was expecting more.”
“Just wait,” Nancy said.
“Playing tough to get, eh? Well, how would you like to see me do a magic trick?” Astrid asked the group, who nodded enthusiastically.
She held up a small orb in her right hand. “Look closely at this ball, it shows you the exact thing that you want the most,” she said mysteriously.
They gathered around her and her little orb.
She waited for them to settle. “And now for the fun part. Laposde.”
There was a flash of light so brilliant that Nancy lost her vision completely for a few seconds. She blinked furiously. “Oh crap,” she said, “I forgot I was supposed to warn you not to watch that, it causes temporary blindness.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” Grayson said. “If your brilliant plan was for us to sneak in there when they couldn’t see, then it’s not going to work, because none of us can see either!”
Nancy’s vision was starting to return now. “Calm down, old man. Look.”
Astrid was now standing alone in front of the door. “What are you people waiting for? I did my part.” She sighed and her shoulders slumped. “Despite my warning, you people watched the whole thing, didn’t you? Idiots.”
Nancy led Grayson and Gorb down the hall to the doorway.
Astrid used her magic to get them in.
“Okay,” Nancy said. “Ben told me there would be a giant cutoff switch surrounded by a red area of paint. There!” She pointed. She ran to the spot.
“Then he said to find and break the glass, because inside the glass is the tool used to rotate the switch counter clockwise in order to turn the master power switch off.”
“Here it is,” Gorb said, pointing a tendril. “Can I do it?”
“Be my guest, Gorb,” Nancy said. He broke the glass.
“Hey, I’d hurry if I were you guys,” Astrid said, “I don’t have any more magic orbs.”
Grayson cleared the glass and grabbed the tool. “Why am I even here?” he asked. “When were you going to tell me all of these details?”
“We already did,” Nancy said, “between your sixth and seventh beer.”
“Oh.”
He and Nancy positioned the tool on the switch. “Here goes nothing. Oh, and Gorb?”
“Yeah?”
“See how fast you can find a couple of flashlights. If this works, we’re going to need them.”
It was explained to Nancy very specifically that once the power was out, the action could not be undone. The power would eventually have to be restored remotely with a complicated procedure that could take months.
She couldn’t believe that this was how it was going to all end. It took less than a minute to turn the switch. There was a loud pop. And then everything went dark.
The silence was overwhelming.
Until Grayson yelled out, “Hooray, we did it. Now what?” He said, “Somebody please tell me, because honestly I don’t remember anything else in the plan.”
Jarvis got a couple of text messages from the soldiers he had sent to guard the electrical shutoff switch.
There was some kind of disturbance. That was the last straw. He decided to contact Base again. Otherwise, she was going to kill them all.
“Look, Base,” he said, “the subject you sent us in to protect, she’s just too dangerous and you didn’t give us enough firepower to deal with it. You’re going to have to evac us and then re-equip us.”
He had no intention of ever coming back, but he also wasn’t going to hang around and get killed. He waited for an answer.
“Base to Jarvis, it’s not going to happen.”
“You’re just going to leave us to die?”
“We’re leaving you to do the job we paid you for.”
“Okay,” Jarvis said. “I hear you, but I’m going to remember this, mark my words.”
“According to our calculations, you have less than an hour to live. It will be us who remember you, bounty hunter.” The line went dead.
“That’s it,” Jarvis said. He didn’t have to say anything else or talk the others into it, they had heard everything. “Get everybody down to the transportation bay. We’re getting out of here now.”
Lyra closed her eyes and felt no shame. She had done her best to protect Ian, her friends, and the other residents of Celestica. This space station was her whole world, and she hated to give it up. Sometimes, you just get beat.
In that last moment she felt peace. And then everything went completely quiet. Which was odd. She thought that it had been quiet before. But now it was conspicuously quiet. Like she had missed something. Was she already dead? She hadn’t felt anything. She peeked an eye open.
Nothing changed. She still couldn’t see anything. Then she remembered the plan. Electricity! Had the crazy, drunken plan worked after all?
“Ian?” she called out.
“Lyra?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
“YEAH!” Lyra yelled. She pulled her arms out from behind her, she was no longer bound by glowing ropes. In fact, for the first time since she had entered, nothing in the room was glowing.
Lyra pulled out the small flashlight she had put in her pocket in case the plan worked.
She tried to think back to the rest of the plan, it had gone together in a rush. And she’d had a lot to drink, and frankly, she never thought it would get this far in the first place.
“Okay,” she muttered. There were no other sounds in the room, so they were all probably listening, but it didn’t really matter now. “First there was the internet. Check. Turned that off. Then I came and got Ian. Well, sort of. That part is kind of still in process. Oh yeah, Callista? You okay?”
“Getting there,” Callista moaned.
“Lyra, what are you talking about?” Ian asked.
“The plan,” she answered. “I’m trying to remember the plan. Don’t interrupt me, this is harder than you think. Now, where was I?”
“Um, saving me,” Ian said. “In process or something.”
“Oh yeah. Save Ian. Well, you’re still alive, so yay for me. And then the electricity.”
Way to go, guys.
“And then there were a couple more things. Um, something about a ticking clock. Obviously without electricity the space station will become uninhabitable.”
“Oh yeah,” Ian said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Not so fast,” Aquila’s voice said.
Lyra remembered she had the flashlight in her hand. She fumbled around for the on switch. “What was that last thing?” She thought.
Then Lyra heard the sound of the door busting open and saw light enter the room. Electronic lanterns were thrown into the room and went scattering across the floor. It wasn’t quite as much light as before, but it was plenty since Lyra’s eyes had already adjusted to the dark.
“Lyra!” Vax said. “You forgot the part where Vax comes bursting in here with his sword and Merck and his orc friends and dozens of blasters.”
“Oh yeah,” Lyra said. “And that’s my very favorite part of the plan. Because Aquila is trapped and vulnerable and can now be killed,” Lyra yelled. She finally got her flashlight switched on.
“I just added a new part to the plan,” Lyra said.
“What’s that?” Ian asked.
“Kick queen Aquila’s ass,” Lyra said. She located Aquila, retreating to her throne. “Where ya going? You’re not so tough without your immortality and interdimensional power, are you? And I don’t care what dirt you have on me or any politician either, we’re taking out the digitized trash here and now. Nobody takes my man and my space station.”
Lyra charged her. Aquila made a clumsy attempt to jump out of the way, but she was unaccustomed to being fully physical. Lyra only got one good swing in before realizing that she didn’t need revenge. She needed to survive.
With Ian and the rest of her friends. Even if it meant leaving Celestica, something she thought she’d never do.
She and Ian embraced, and then they made their way across the room to help Callista.
The three of them headed to the door. “Hey, guys,” Lyra said. “I am so grateful for your help, but now we have to get out of here. We’re going to run out of air and heat and all kinds of wonderful environmental conditions that allow us to survive.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Vax asked, standing over Aquila. “We have to take her out.”
“Oh yeah. Speaking of fancy introductions: Aquila, I’d like you to meet our Krull surgeon Vax, and his sword.”
And so, after dispatching Aquila, the group grabbed a few of the lanterns and made their way to transportation.
Everybody else was waiting there in the giant transportation bay. Something was wrong though, they were all just sitting in an empty room. There were no ships.
“Callista, I thought you saved us a ship.”
“I did.”
Nancy was crouched off to the side. “They shot Arthur on their way out,” she said.
Lyra ran to Arthur.
“He’s going to be okay,” Nancy said.
“Who shot him?” Lyra asked.
“The soldiers. They bugged out and took our last ship.”
What are we going to do now? The words floated around in Lyra’s brain, but she couldn’t bear to say them out loud. Everything had gone perfect, more than perfect. And now, with the internet down, the power out, and life sustaining conditions quickly draining from the space station, they were left out in the cold. It just didn’t seem fair.
Despair hung in the air for a few moments. Nobody spoke.
“Beep. Boop, Boop. Beep.”
“Macro!” Lyra yelled as the little robot came around the corner. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed that he wasn’t there.
“Where’d you go, little buddy?”
“Beep. Beep. Boop. Boop. Beep.”
“What?” Lyra asked.
Macro abandoned his normal mode and went into his quick-communication setting. Then he threw a bunch of computer sounding noises at her.
“What’s he saying?” Nancy asked.
“He says he was able to get a distress call out. He was close enough to piggyback off of the internet signal that the ship the soldiers stole connected to once it hit open space.”
Macro let loose with another barrage of sounds.
“He says there’s a ship approaching now.”
More beeps and boops.
“But there’s a problem, the transportation bay doors won’t open without electricity.”
“Hey Merck,” Vax said. “You’re a miner, right?”
“Right you are, Vax.”
“You got any blasting compound?”
Merck grabbed a lantern and sprinted off. “Be right back.”
“Macro,” Lyra said, “tell that ship to back away from the transportation bay doors. Tell them we’re going to blow them open.”
“Like hell you’re going to blast a giant hole in my space station,” Callista said.
They all turned to look at her.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “We have to in order to get out of here. Don’t mind me, I think I have a head injury. Carry on.”
Unable to hold it in any longer, Lyra began to laugh. Once she let it go, she couldn’t contain it. The laughter wasn’t directed at Callista, it was just a crazy venting of the tension of the last few hours coupled with the intoxicating possibility of actually surviving.
When Merck came around the corner, the room was filled with laughter and he looked confused. “Great,” he said, “what did I miss?”
“Nothing,” Lyra said, wiping a tear from her eye, “let her rip.”
“We’re coming back, Callista. Okay? The hole can be fixed, and the power can be restored. But you people are the best friends I’ve ever had, and we’re going to be okay. And I can’t wait to get back here
with all of you.”
Merck rolled his eyes at the mushy words and went to the far end of the room to set the explosives. At least he had put clothes back on.
Lyra turned to Ian. “And you,” she said, “I wasn’t kidding. I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said.
“Will you, Ian of Fear Zone Universe, come back to Celestica with me, when they get it fixed?”
“I will,” he said, and he kissed her. The world around Lyra disappeared.
She heard Merck yell, “Fire in the hole,” and then there was a flash of light, but it didn’t matter because her eyes were still closed.
The background explosions made it the coolest and most romantic kiss ever. And that made it easier for Lyra to step off of the space station she called home and onto the rescue ship.
About the Author
L.A. Johnson writes fun, original Sci-Fi you won’t find anywhere else.
Connect with me
www.lajbooks.com
Digital Ghosts: Book 2 of the Space Station At The Edge Of The Black Hole Series Page 14