The Return (Alternate Dimensions Book 5)

by Blake B. Rivers

  “I fear that I was so preoccupied with creating a dose large enough and being able to get to the escape pod in time, that it might have slipped my mind to create any sort of effective delivery system.”

  “Well that’s just wonderful. I guess we’ll be enlisting the help of water balloons then. That way, when we’re swallowed up by the burning destruction that’s about to rock this station’s world, we’ll at least be having fun.”

  “Fire?” I murmured slowly, the exhausted sludge that was my mind picking up at the tail end of an idea. “Hey guys, what do you use for a fire suppression system in the future? I know you would normally just shut off oxygen to an area if it was a ship, but what do you do in such a residential place where they’re so many civilians?”

  “There are a couple of different measures. There’s an entire system of pipes with fire suppressant, cryo-sprayers to freeze really bad infernos, you know, the usual.”

  “Actually, I don’t know the usual, but those pipes with fire suppressant, they’re set off to spray down whenever the temperature gets too high, right?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “And where do they keep that stuff when it’s not being pumped through the system? Is there a vat, or a container somewhere?”

  “Yeah, usually somewhere around environmental.”

  “What if we mixed the cure with the coolant? Would that work, or would that dilute it too much?”

  “The coolant would kill any sort of active ingredient in the cure, but we could drain the tank then fill it with a mixture of straight water and my mass batch without compromising the cure’s structure.”

  “Alright, then how do we get to environmental?”

  “Um…” Janix murmured. “I’m not expert, but isn’t that sort of stuff usually in the heart of a station, under layers and layers of security?”

  “Yup.” Viys’k answered dully as the partition in front of us slid upwards. “I tried to case this place once for a possible job, I ended up turning it down. You don’t want to know how wired this place is.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered, exchanging a glance with Jyra. “I think I do.”

  “Crap, are we really doing this?”

  “You have a better idea for delivering the cure to everything that could possibly get into this station?”

  “No. But let it be said that, for the record, I don’t approve of this idea.”

  “It wouldn’t be one of our plans if you did.”

  We walked into what had to be the most derelect hall I had even seen since our little stint on Jyra’s original station. Cobwebs were everywhere and the normally sleek chrome had no shine. It made me wonder what kind of creatures built webs on a space station. Was it spiders or something terrifying like… space-spiders? I didn’t know what a space-spider would look like, but it certainly sounded terrifying.

  “Thankfully this port leads to the maintenance level of the station. This is where most of the engineers, facility workers, welders, environmental scientists and all those good-folk to their nine to five. Except it’s not nine to five so much as all around the clock to make sure the station keeps on grooving like it’s supposed to.

  “First thing we have to do is get through that level to the grav-lifts then make our way to sanitation. We’ll need either a key-card or some serious luck to hack it without setting off alarms, then emptying out the coolant vat, then rerouting a water line to re-fill the vat without a stray Councilman finding us and starting our own mini-version of the firefight outside.”

  “I thought they were supposed to be distracted by said massive firefight?”

  “Sure, the bulk of them, but who knows if there’s going to be a straggler who fell asleep in some corner that they weren’t supposed to.”

  “Well, let’s hope we luck out then.” Bajol whispered with crossed fingers. “We’re all armed, if that helps.”

  “Not that I can actually use this thing,” I grumbled, letting my hand rest over the top of the blaster they had given me.

  “When have we ever?”

  “I dunno,” Janix pointed out. “You did manage to stumble onto having insane powers when you were supposed to be murdered in the toughest prison in our entire system. If you ask me, you’ve had a whole lot of luck from the very star.”

  “Shh,” Viys’k reminded. “The other side of this door leads to an actually populated area. Let’s just hope everyone is busy with prep and boosting the shields to not worry about much else.”

  “Fingers crossed.”

  She pulled out what I recognized as a mini-welder and then we were cutting our entrance through the door.

  I wanted to ask her why we weren’t using the door itself, but I figured that would be answered when we were through to the other side. It was probably best not to make too much additional noise or distract her from her a-billion-degree tool.

  In less than a minute, she cut open a hole large enough for us to squeeze through and used one of her little circle magnets to pull the molten-edged piece and set it down a bit away from us. Then she pulled out another little canister from her belt and sprayed something around the hole to make it go from burning, violent red down to a dull, burnt gray.

  “After you,” She smarmed, giving a bit of a bow.

  “You know, once this is over, what are you going to do with that bundle of thieving skills you have?” Janix asked.

  “Well, unlike you, I’m not planning my retirement anytime soon, so I’ll probably go back to thieving.”

  “Really, after all this, you still want to be on the wrong side of the law?”

  “Honey, even if we get through this alive, who says we’re going to be on the right side of the law? It’s not like we’re suddenly going to be pardoned because the big, amazing Council of Six realizes they’ve been bamboozled by a cloud monster that’s been manipulating them for years. If we’re lucky, they’ll slowly drop us of the most wanted list until we can live in mild obscurity.”

  “That’s a highly pessimistic thought. You don’t think they’ll be grateful for us making the cure?”

  “Are you kidding? That’s the only reason they won’t kill us outright.”

  We finished pushing ourselves through the hole and I took a moment to examine my surroundings. The room we had skulked into was truly huge, bigger than several football stadiums and twice as tall. Everywhere I looked there were walkways and pipes and tanks and glowing lights. It reminded me of the schematics I had drilled into my head during my time with Serkasis labs, but twice as big. Alarms were blaring here too, with a steady, calm voice giving orders of what to do and where to go.

  “This way,” Viys’k said, creeping along the closest catwalk. “Keep your head down and get ready to run at any moment.”

  I crouched down, the others following suit, and we started sneaking forward. Our quiet, careful crawl forward was in such stark contrast with the high-flying space battle we had just been it that I almost felt like we were going in slow motion.

  It was a full two minutes before we crossed paths with our first worker. Janix spotted them first and hissed a warning.

  “Quick, everyone get up and jog like we’re supposed to be there.”

  “Yeah, like that’s really going to work.”

  “Can’t knock it till you try it.”

  I didn’t have a rebuttal for that, as so like little gophers, we all popped up and jogged along. We rounded a corner just as the worker in question did, and they didn’t pay us any mind as they ran towards whatever it was they had to do.

  “I can’t believe it was that easy,” Bajol murmured as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “Eh, getting to the elevator isn’t the hard part. Everyone’s busy making sure they survive the attack. The hard part is going to be getting into said elevator.”

  “Really? I thought with all this hubbub all the lifts would be going like crazy and we could just hop in when an employee swipes their card.”

  “Oh, they are going to be in use, but all of the elevato
rs scan the DNA of each occupant within it. I’m going to have to run a scrambler for our entire ride without anyone else who’s crammed into the small space with us noticing.”

  “…oh.”

  “Like I said. The security on this place is no joke. If you think this is bad, you should see what their set up to protect their mainframe crystals is like.”

  “Wait, so all this is the easy?”

  “Relatively, yeah. All we’ve done is use an abandoned port and jogged around. We’re just getting started.”

  “There’s the elevator!”

  “Stop pointing.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  I looked in the direction that Jyra had been pointing before she quickly put her hand down and sure enough, there was a line of eight or so shafts, each of them with a brightly lit square either coming down or going up.

  People were pouring in and out of them, everyone in a rush and various stages of panic. Unlike us, they had no idea what was crashing into them or why. According to their point of view, this random, unmarked vessel the size of a world-ending comet came popping into existence too far within their nuclear blast range to be able to release any missiles that could potentially be powerful enough to destroy it. I couldn’t blame them for being terrified. I was scared and I knew exactly what was going on.

  We reached the elevator just in time for a burly woman to push past us, sliding her card and muttering protocol to herself as she stared at the numbers counting down.

  “Sorry,” She muttered tersely.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Viys’k answered, deftly sliding behind me and pulling yet another thing out of her belt. I assumed it was the DNA scrambler gizmo she had talked about. Definitely didn’t want anyone to see that, so I stayed as still as possible while she fiddled behind me.

  Thankfully, the woman by us had no desire to make conversation. And neither did the krelach who ran up a few seconds later. By the time the elevator came down after about a minute of waiting, we had a good crowd of ten.

  The grav-lift, from what I could tell was just a bigger elevator with transparent walls being pushed up and down by an energy stream rather than incredibly thick wire. Showy and glow-y that was for certain, but not all that practical looking.

  The elevator landed with a sci-fi boop instead of a beep, then the doors opened, allowing a rush of humans out. I counted over seven in the rush, and then we were all crowding in.

  I heard a soft blip with each person’s entrance and figured that was the DNA reader going off. I tensed for a moment, and almost hesitated -was Viys’k ready yet- but I was pushed in by the force of traffic into the rectangular, moving room.

  I held my breath for a moment, waiting for more alarms to start sounding and the lift to lock up, but nothing happened. Thank goodness.

  Viys’k walked straight into the corner, facing it as she fiddled with her Gizmo. Bajol and I, the tallest of our group, took on the job of shielding her from the view of the rest of the cabin, standing perpendicular to each other in what I hoped looked like a somewhat natural position.

  And it worked! Somehow it worked.

  The group waited in terse silence, and we all exited en masse once it stopped, everyone jogging off to wherever it was they were supposed to do. It was all a bit surreal as we followed Viys’k down some hall or another. She knew where we were going and that was the important part.

  Unfortunately, we weren’t alone. On the third catwalk we crossed, another worker came from a different direction, jogging in front of us. They were wearing plainclothes that I was pretty sure was pajamas, and their short hair was all mussed to one side. It looked like someone had been woken up out of bed.

  We all reached the door and they scanned their card and punched in a code before leaning over to scan their eye. The entrance slid open, and the seirr looked back at us. “No piggy-backing.” They said flatly.

  “Are you kidding me?” Viys’k said with a short laugh. “We’re in the middle of a level five emergency and we were all called here without warning. Some of us didn’t have time to go grab our cards.”

  “It’s not my fault if you broke protocol by not having it on you at all times. I’m going to check the pressure in the fire system. We don’t need six of us to do that.” Their round eyes looked over us. “Are you even in the right devision? I’ve been on the sanitation branch for five years and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you.”

  “Wait,” Viys’k shot back. “Are you saying that all krelach look the same?”

  “What? No! I-” While they quickly tried to backpedal, Bajol silently sidled up beside them and pressed and injector to their arm.

  “W-what is this?” They groaned before melting into an unconscious puddle on the ground. “You some kind of t-t-erroris…t?”

  “Nah, we’re just the fall guys who are risking our lives to save you all.” Viys’k grumbled. “You guys gram them and get them into the safest corner you can find. I’ll start the draining process for the coolant.”

  We nodded and did as she asked. As we were carrying the relatively light alien to a far corner away from pipes and sharp objects, all of our comms went live with what I recognized as Arq’s voice.

  “I have the ship locked in our tractor beam but it’s too big for us to slow down much. Prepare for impact in less than two minutes.”

  “That’s not going to be enough time to drain the coolant and refill the tank with water!”

  “Well shave off some seconds, because that’s what’s happening.”

  “Dammit, Arq! I’ll try. It’s not like I have much of a choice here.”

  “No, you do not. I recommend bracing yourself. This is going to be less than pleasant for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  The comm clicked off and Viys’k was back in motion. She scurried up the side of some giant reservoir -that had to be the coolant tank. It was much bigger than I had imagined. Instead of being about water-tower size, it was more like… a silo, I guessed? I wasn’t really an expert in farming dimensions but it was the biggest, cylindrical thing I could think of.

  The krelach stood at some sort of command port and went to work, punching in commands while at the same time issuing orders to us. “Andi! You see that small, yellow tubing above my head? About as thick as your wrist?”

  I looked up, squinting against the harsh lights on the ceiling high above. “Yeah! I see it.”

  “Good. I’m going to need you to cut that on my cue so the water can pour into the coolant tank!”

  “How am I supposed to get up there?”

  “I dunno! You’ve got long legs, climb or something! They’re stairs just behind me, they’ll probably get you most of the way there.”

  I nodded and ran towards what I hoped was the correct path. Over a landing, behind Viys’k, up a flight of stairs, and then finally to a catwalk. Sure enough, the yellow pipe was almost within reach, but almost wasn’t good for much given the situation.

  I looked around, trying to find something that could help me. Less than a foot or so below the catwalk was a thick, clear tubing that had some sort of sludge running through it. Judging the size of it, I could probably straddle it and then reach up to cut the yellow one I was supposed to.

  “Yeah, that’ll work.” I muttered to myself.

  The thought of being so high up, and only having my thighs to cling to my lifeline was a bit intimidating, but I just told myself not to look down. Or at least more down than I had to.

  Carefully, I stepped off of the catwalk, lowering myself with one leg thrown over the tube. My heart was all the way in my throat as I settled onto the length. It was much slicker than I would have liked, and I could see myself falling to my death a little too vividly.

  But I couldn’t let myself get distracted, so I looked for the yellow I was supposed to cut. It was just above my head and to the left. If I had thought about it ahead of time, I would have faced the other way. But, as it were, I hadn’t been practical all and I had to cut it with my less-dominant hand.r />
  “Not yet!” Viys’k cried up to me as I reached for the yellow line.

  “Oh, sorry!”

  The comm buzzed again. “Hey, not to hurry you guys, but you’ve got less than thirty seconds until impact.”

  “Thanks. I always love these little countdowns to our certain death.” I chirped. “They really put life into perspective, you know?”

  “You’re hilarious. Just make sure you’re hilarious and strapped in.”

  “It’s drained! Do it now, Andi!”

  I cut the line and water did indeed come pouring out, nearly blasting my own hand off and almost knocking me from my perch. My arms pinwheeled, and I could fell myself slipping off to the side.

  But before I could topple to my untimely demise, I felt strong hands grip me and yank me back onto the catwalk.

  “There you go,” I heard Janix breath. “I got you. You’re safe.”

  “Jyra! Get me your batch now!”

  “Coming!”

  I stood, seeing the scientist book it up the stairs.

  Once more, the comms buzzed. “The ship broke itself out of the tractor beam! Impact is now! Brace y-”

  In my time in Jyra’s dimensions I had been in more than my fair share of ship wrecks. I’d been rattled around, free-jumped through space, fallen to the ground from the sky, the list went on. But none of those even came close to the violence of the crash as it enveloped the station.

  One moment I was standing on the catwalk, gripping the handrails for dear life, the next I was sailing over the edge, surrounded by a massive cacophony of noise.

  My reality was enveloped with fire and shaking, with the screaming of metal as it twisted and popped under the incredible impact above. I couldn’t discern much beyond the heat and deafening clamor. I slammed into something with a force that drove every bit of air from my body, and I was pretty sure that I heard bones crunch.

  I rolled onto my back, eliciting a breathless whine of pain, and tried to clear my vision. But instead of understanding dawning on me as my eyes adjusted, I caught a faint shadow hurtling down towards me. Before I could gather my wits enough to move, a pipe slammed into my middle, forcing the air from my lungs yet again.