Linkage (The Narrows of Time Series Book 1)

by Jay J. Falconer

  “What if they refuse?” Lucas asked.

  “Then it’s Plan B and your team. Until then, I need you to stand down and monitor the exchange,” Kleezebee answered before looking at Trevor. “Remember, don’t bring the rest of the material until I call for you.”

  Trevor nodded.

  Kleezebee held up a pair of pendant necklaces. “The techs have built a one-way video/audio transmitter into these pendants. They should allow you to see what’s going on during the exchange.” He pointed to a pair of unmanned video screens, just to the right of his lead technician. “We’ll pipe the signals through to those monitors.”

  “Will they be powerful enough to carry the signal back here, across dimensions?” Lucas asked.

  Kleezebee didn’t answer. Instead, he looked at his lead tech.

  The tech nodded. “Won’t be a problem, sir. We’ve programmed the transmitters to scan the rift and match its energy signature. We should be able to piggyback the carrier wave. Should have plenty of signal strength.”

  “Assuming the bugs leave the rift open the entire time,” Lucas added.

  “True,” the tech answered.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Twenty-two minutes later, the Krellians opened the rift in the same location as before. It started as a pinpoint before growing to full size, sending flashes of light rippling across the walls.

  The aliens had put out the welcome mat right on schedule, adding a sliver of optimism to counterbalance Lucas’ growing anxiety. Unlike his colleagues, Lucas refused to pin all his hope on Kleezebee’s approach. The professor’s rescue plan was founded on a set of optimistic assumptions, most of which Lucas considered unreliable.

  Plus, since everything Lucas was involved in lately had turned to shit, why should today’s plan be any different? Expect the worst and hope for the best was the only motto that seemed to work for him.

  If he was going to die today, he intended to go out on his feet, fighting like a wildcat—a University of Arizona Wildcat. He sucked at all things sports-related, so joining a paramilitary team on an inter-dimensional bug hunt would have to make up for it. He let out a guarded smile, more out of pride than from high expectations, while he adjusted the hidden stunner’s position inside the back of his pants.

  The elevator bell sounded, delivering seven additional security team members, who scampered out of the lift while carrying stunners and traditional 9mm handguns. They spread out in formation to take flanking positions in front of the portal with their weapons drawn.

  Kleezebee slipped the transmitter necklace over his head, then moved in front of the rift on crutches, where he waited for Bruno to join him. Bruno, who was already wearing his copy of the necklace, bent down to snatch a one-gallon jug of deactivated BioTex. He carried the container in his arms, walking with heavy feet to Kleezebee’s location. Other than Bruno’s Sonic Disruptor vest, neither man was armed.

  Lucas joined Trevor at the remote monitoring station near the front of the room. He watched the screen while his boss and friend entered the trans-dimensional portal and stepped into their home universe. The portal’s surveillance system functioned perfectly, allowing them to see and hear everything. Lucas raised his left hand, then knuckle-bumped the elderly video tech sitting to his left. “Great job,” he told him emphatically.

  He was sure the tech already knew who he was, but he wanted to know the tech’s name. His right hand went out for a shake. “My name’s Lucas Ramsay, by the way.”

  “Claude Vandersteen. Pleased to meet you,” the old guy said, shaking his hand in earnest.

  The monitor in front of Lucas contained the video transmission from Kleezebee’s pendant. Bruno’s feed was streaming live on the other monitor to his right, directly in front of Trevor.

  Kleezebee and Bruno were standing inside a sparsely-lit room with angled eight-foot long wall segments, which glistened like algae-green sheet metal. Based on Kleezebee’s earlier description of Krellian ship design, Lucas assumed the shape of the room was octagonal.

  Three Krellian sentinels were standing with their backs against the visible wall segments, aiming their grappling hook weapons at Kleezebee. Lucas wondered why their warriors didn’t carry more powerful energy-based weapons, like phase pistols or pulse rifles. Granted, the grappling hooks were deadly and reusable, but their range was limited. Then the answer hit him when he realized their enormous claws would make it impossible for them to pull the trigger on a more conventional weapon.

  “Makes you wonder how they operate their ship controls with those enormous claws,” Claude said.

  “Yeah, it must be tough for them to wipe, too,” Lucas replied.

  Trevor laughed, sending a patch of spittle from his mouth as he snorted and doubled over in his chair.

  Lucas took a moment to relish the big man’s chuckle. It was the first time he remembered hearing the Swede bust a gut about anything, making Trevor seem more human than before. Perhaps the stress of the situation had finally gotten to his massive friend.

  The elevator doors behind them opened again, delivering another seven-member squad of men to the surveillance room. This time two of the reinforcements were Bruno copies. They joined the other men already standing guard in front of the still-open rift.

  When Kleezebee turned to his left, the video pendant showed a human female approaching his position. She was stark naked, in her twenties, and full-figured. The other monitor showed Bruno turning to greet her, too.

  “Looks like the women aren’t allowed to wear clothes, ever,” Lucas said, watching the amber-haired woman carry some type of hooded garment draped across her arms, possibly a robe. The rust-colored clothing was much too small to fit the creatures. The woman gave the robe to Kleezebee in exchange for his crutches.

  “Oh shit,” Lucas said, seeing the professor unbutton his shirt. “What if they make Bruno change, too? They’ll take the activator switch away.”

  “Then he won’t be able to activate the vest,” Claude replied, typing on his wireless keyboard, then using the touch screen to swipe through a few control screens. “But not to worry, I can remotely trigger the vest if Bruno can’t, as long as the rift remains open.”

  “Then let’s hope it stays open,” Lucas replied as a new window appeared on the tech’s computer screen with a title bar that said REMOTE ARMING SEQUENCE. Below the title was a red outlined button labeled FIRE.

  Lucas wondered if he’d be the one to press the kill switch. If so, he needed to know more about the control system the technician was using. “What about my vest? Can they both be set off?”

  “The system can activate them at the same time, but you must activate the secondary transmission channel like this,” the tech said, pointing at the monitor. He swiped twice and pulled the contents of the display down, showing an underlying page of six buttons—each with text underneath. One of them was labeled DUAL ACTIVATION in red lettering. Lucas studied the screen, memorizing how the tech navigated to it as well as the location of the activation button.

  The tech entered more commands into the keyboard before using his hand to touch and swipe back to the original Remote Arming Sequence screen. A partially filled computer graphic, like a meter, was now showing in the corner. It read OUTPUT LEVEL.

  “Vest’s power level?” Lucas asked, wondering why it wasn’t clearly labeled like the others.

  Claude nodded and said, “Sure is.”

  The meter showed it was set very low and Lucas didn’t understand why. “Shouldn’t we be using full power?”

  “No. We don’t want to take the chance of overloading the disruptor pads, so I’ve set the power level to ten percent.”

  “Is it enough to kill ‘em?”

  “Absolutely, many times over. The vest’s E-121 power supply is much more powerful than we really need. When we tested it on the alien corpse, we were successful using only a five percent nominal yield. Ten percent should be more than enough to kill anything in that room.”

  While Kleezebee changed his clothes
, his body kept swaying and so did the pendant. The video feed jostled and blurred as it bounced around his chest. After Kleezebee bent down to slide off what Lucas assumed was his underpants, the professor’s hidden camera held still long enough for Lucas to catch a glimpse of the naked woman standing in front of him. She was still holding the pair of crutches. Kleezebee put on the robe and lashed it around his waist. His video feed went black.

  “Come on, DL, pull it out,” Lucas coaxed him, needing to see what was happening.

  The video screen’s image returned to normal when Kleezebee adjusted the pendant’s position so it hung outside the robe.

  “Good thing you used a pendant cam instead of a button cam,” Lucas said, watching the streaming footage sway back and forth repeatedly until the pendant came to rest.

  Both Bruno and Kleezebee faced the woman as she scooped up the professor’s clothes and walked away, giving Lucas a clear view of her shoulder tattoo. It was the same hand-carved branding mark Alicia showed them earlier in the infirmary. Moments later, she returned with another robe, giving it to Bruno.

  “I hope it’s a double XL,” he wisecracked.

  “Let’s see what she does with the vest,” Claude said after a short chuckle.

  Kleezebee kept his pendant trained on Bruno as he removed his pants. “God, I hope we don’t have to see him without his—”

  “Too late,” Claude replied as Bruno removed his boxers.

  Kleezebee’s camera feed turned away from Bruno, providing a panoramic view of the octagon-shaped room. The wall segment to the professor’s right had an arched passageway that led into another chamber. Flaming torches were burning on either side of the opening, making the room look medieval.

  “Not exactly high-tech,” Lucas said.

  When Kleezebee turned back, Bruno was dressed in the robe with his pendant hanging outside the garment. The woman was picking up Bruno’s clothes.

  “Since his clothes aren’t dissolving into BioTex, I assume they’re real?” Lucas asked.

  “Ja, real clothes,” Trevor said, breaking his silence. “Vest not fit on uniform.”

  The woman put Bruno’s vest on top of the clothes, and carried them through the passageway, out of sight.

  “Is that going to be a problem?” Lucas asked Claude.

  “It depends on where she takes it,” Claude answered as the woman walked back into the room empty-handed. “She couldn’t have gone far, so we should be okay.”

  Four gray-haired men, all at least sixty years old, entered the exchange room wearing white ceremonial garb. Based on their dress and mannerisms, Lucas assumed they were diplomats from Kleezebee’s planet. At least not all the men had been eaten, giving him renewed hope that his brother might be returned in one piece. “Looks like a geriatric toga party,” he mumbled, trying to relieve some of his own stress with a little more humor.

  The old men stood in pairs, facing the entrance. Two ultra-slender naked females—no more than eighteen years old—carried in an eight-foot-long banquet table and put it between the two pairs of men.

  “You don’t think its dinner time, do you?” Lucas asked his colleagues, worrying his brother might be the entrée. Trevor looked more concerned than the tech, but neither of them answered.

  A Krellian sentinel entered the room with a human female impaled on the end of one of its tentacles. Four more aliens followed in behind it, then moved to surround Kleezebee and Bruno.

  “Here we go,” Claude said.

  The sentinel used the female translator to say, “SHOW US.”

  Bruno placed the one-gallon container of BioTex on the table and slid it close to the Krellian puppeteer. The elder statesmen closest to the creature removed the container’s lid, allowing the sentinel to slip one of its remaining tentacles into the goop.

  “It must be siphoning a sample,” Claude said.

  “Ja, to test it,” Trevor added.

  The creature withdrew its tentacle and began to speak on its own, bypassing the woman translator. Its language sounded like a computer modem on steroids as it whined and squealed at a feverous pitch. Lucas figured the alien was reporting its findings to the others, or perhaps to its superiors. There was no telling who or what might have been monitoring the proceedings.

  Thirty seconds went by before the sentinel stopped its communication and then turned to face the other aliens in the room. Its chest plate lit up like the Las Vegas Strip with an array of lights buried deep inside its exoskeleton. The chest plate gave off a dull hum as the lights flashed in an irregular pattern. Lucas could see the faint outline of organs and other tissue inside the towering beast.

  Bruno turned his body to show some of the other aliens whose chest plates were flashing in a similar fashion. Lucas assumed the Krellians were communicating with each other over some form of biological network. He thought the other bugs were receiving data from the sentinel, or perhaps all of them were receiving orders from a remote location.

  A few seconds later, the sentinel stuck its tentacle back into the female hand puppet. The creature raised her high into the air and squealed, as if it were celebrating. The other aliens joined in the festivities with their own rendition of the noise.

  It reminded Lucas of a Native American war cry that preceded an all-out assault. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  The Krellian sentinel used the female translator to speak to Kleezebee. “SECOND SUBSTANCE MISSING.”

  “I want to see my son first!” the professor shot back.

  One of the other warriors approached Kleezebee, opened its right claw, and held it open just inches from Kleezebee’s jugular.

  Lucas looked at Claude, but the tech’s hand never moved. Lucas reached out with his left arm to position the tip of his finger a quarter inch from the touch screen’s FIRE button.

  Claude grabbed Lucas’ wrist, pulling it back. “Not yet. They could simply be posturing, testing for weakness. Let’s see what happens.”

  “You can kill me if you want,” Kleezebee told the bugs, “but we’re not giving you the activator enzyme until you bring me my son.”

  The sentinel tilted its head, then squealed as if Kleezebee’s demand pissed it off. “HOLD POSITION,” the creature answered through its female translator.

  Both Bruno and Kleezebee turned their bodies toward the wall opening. Moments later, an alien soldier armed with a grappling hook device in one of its claws appeared with Drew wrapped inside its tentacles, carrying him like a loaf of bread on its side. It raised its empty claw, then opened and snapped it shut several times, only a foot in front of Drew’s neck.

  “Oh my God, Drew!” Lucas said, his heart ready to explode.

  “Release him and let him return to Earth,” Kleezebee demanded. “Then I’ll hand over the remaining material.”

  “GIVE US MATERIAL OR CRIPPLE DIES,” the sentinel replied, as its chest plate flashed and hummed.

  Lucas looked at Claude. “We have to do something, now!”

  The tech didn’t answer, his eyes glued to the video feeds.

  “Okay. Okay. Just don’t hurt him,” Kleezebee shouted, as he turned slowly back toward the portal. The change in view showed two sentinels standing guard in front of the portal’s opening. The professor’s voice changed as he used a controlled, softer tone. “Claude, go ahead and send Trevor through.”

  Claude finally turned his attention to Lucas. “You need to calm down and stop overreacting. We have this covered.” He gave Trevor a hand wave, telling him it was time to step through.

  Trevor stood up from his chair, grabbed hold of the flatbed cart, and rolled the stack of canisters toward the rift.

  Kleezebee turned forward to face the creature in charge. “Okay, I did as you asked. The material is on its way. Give me my son.”

  The sentinel let out a short squeal and its chest flashed twice. The alien holding its claw around Kleezebee’s neck backed away to make room for the other creature to deliver Drew to Kleezebee. Bruno moved next to Kleezebee and stood be
hind Drew, who was now sitting on the deck.

  Lucas watched Trevor step into the portal and disappear with the balance of the ransom material—the activator enzyme. Lucas took his eyes from Trevor and looked back at Claude’s video feeds, but now both of them were dark and offline, even though the rift was still open.

  Claude was now pounding away at the keyboard in obvious panic.

  “What the hell just happened? I thought you had this covered?” Lucas screamed at him.

  Claude didn’t answer, his hands working quickly across the array of equipment.

  Get them back!” Lucas said, shaking the man’s shoulder, hoping to get a response.

  “I can’t. The feeds were shut down at the source,” Claude said, stopping his work and sitting back in the chair.

  “Why?”

  “I have no idea,” he said, throwing up his hands.

  “You have to do something!”

  Claude didn’t budge, sitting there looking shell-shocked.

  Lucas couldn’t believe what was happening, or this man’s incompetence. He decided it was time to take action. He stood up and tore off his Disruptor Vest, then tossed it into the portal, sending it to the exchange room on the other side.

  He went back to the console station and used both arms to push Claude out of the way, sending the tech flying out of his chair. Lucas quickly changed screens and armed the dual transmitter system the way Claude showed him earlier, then swiped back to the power screen and raised the energy level to a hundred percent.

  “Ten percent, my ass,” he yelled at Claude while his finger pressed the FIRE button on the screen.

  Lucas grabbed the stunner from the back of his waistband and pulled open the Velcro strap holding the other stunner against his ankle. He ran for the portal with both guns in hand.

  On the way, he motioned for Bruno’s guards to follow him to the Krellian ship. Lucas yelled a commando scream as he jumped into the rift like Rambo breeching a terrorist encampment.