CHAPTER 9
Max awoke to complete darkness under the cool sheets of his bed. The deadweight on his chest stirred as he did before emitting a muted purr. Max placed a gentle hand upon his furry friend and stroked his back. Heavy eyelids slid open, allowing drained eyes to stare at nothing as his mind replayed the events of the previous day. A satisfied grin stretched across his face, for a childhood dream had come true. He basked in the renewed outlook of a cherished new memory. With a hefty sigh, he greeted another uneventful morning.
“Yup, that was a good day,” Max said under his breath.
“If you say so,” Ross said.
Max’s eyes widened, not that anyone could tell. “What the—” A shot of adrenaline bent his torso upwards, tossing Ross to the foot of the bed. Gasps poured from his lungs as eyes twisted around whatever room he occupied.
“Oi, calm down,” Ross said with a hint of irritation. “Denchi.”
Strips of LED lights along the ceiling responded to the command, revealing a charcoal gray room. Max’s frightened eyes darted around the near featureless enclosure. The twin-sized bed he occupied, or a close enough approximation, sat along one wall. An equal amount of open space occupied the other, creating a king-sized cell with a similar height. Thin slivers outlined hidden access panels in the walls. Only the bed, lights, and doorframe broke the smooth planes.
“That’s Korish for light,” Ross said, donning a gratified grin. “They can install some English commands if we like. I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of enjoying the Korish.” Ross lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “Fikarek.”
The ceiling and rear wall disappeared, exposing the external vista of a massive spiral galaxy, its brilliant arms of blue and purple surrounding a giant ball of white light in the center. The collective brilliance of a trillion stars filled the tiny room. Max yelped, leapt out of the bed, and pressed his back against the door.
“You’re perfectly fine, mate,” Ross said with a hearty chuckle. “Calm the bloody hell down. The wall and ceiling are still there, just reflecting the external view. Neat, huh?”
“Hoboy,” Max said through hurried breaths. He lowered his head and closed his eyes to regain control of his breathing.
Ross cocked his ears back. “Okay, too much stimulus. Deyanea.” The wall and ceiling returned to their smooth gray nothingness.
Max bent forward and rested his hands upon his knees. As his breathing returned to a somewhat normal pace, he recognized that a strange fabric hugged his waist, resembling a loose pair of boxers. He pinched and twisted the fabric with his fingers, unable to identify the silky synthetic blend. “Um, where are my clothes?”
“Ponreyka,” Ross said, prompting a drawer to shoot out of the wall beside Max.
A violent flinch crumpled his body. “Dammit! Stop that!”
“Sorry,” Ross said with a snort of amusement.
Max placed a hand on his thumping chest and lowered his gaze to the drawer. His clothes from the previous day lay cleaned, pressed, and folded inside the backlit compartment alongside his backpack. After a few calming breaths, he lowered a nervous hand into the drawer, as if expecting the garments to attack. He retrieved the items piece by piece and reassembled them upon his body. The synthetic fabrics still seemed foreign to his skin, yet they clung to his body with the comfort of a fleece blanket. The deep brown tones of his trousers infected the sterile gray room with a dirty vibe. His navy blue top served as the only pop of color aside from Ross, even beneath a gray overshirt. The drawer closed itself after he nabbed his boots, as if privy to its lack of further relevance. Max took a wearied seat on the bed and slipped his feet into the sim-leather. His hunched posture amplified the stinging pain in his lower back. He pressed on the base of his spine with a soft palm and grimaced in response.
“How’s your back?” Ross said.
“Not well, apparently.”
“You did take one hell of a tumble. I’m surprised you didn’t break something.”
Max indulged in a few core twists and back stretches. After a long sigh of contemplation, he stared at his reflection in the opposite wall. “How am I still here?”
“Because those crafty scraps of hotness got us the hell off Europa.”
“No,” Max said, ruffling his brow. “I mean, how am I still in space?”
Ross tilted his head. “See previous comment.”
* * *
Shifting between parallel universes involved a smattering of quirky little rules. Max, as an unwitting shifter with a unique predicament, never benefited from knowing these rules. The answer to his question lay within the confines of domain, in the sense that shifting only affected the domain of the shifter.
Max had departed planet Earth, the only domain he had ever occupied. In leaving the planet, as well as the solar system, his entire domain had transferred to a tiny freighter vessel floating in the vacuum of space. Therefore, whenever he fell asleep, he awoke to changes unique to that environment and its inhabitants. In this case, a human, a cyborg cat, and a pair of orange lesbians.
In a much-needed stroke of luck, the new universe had offered a mental reprieve in the form of an unseen tweak. Perra, a proud southpaw, had gained a useful amount of ambidexterity, providing her with the unique ability to apply duct tape in any direction.
* * *
Jai Ferenhal stood as a meaty green statue just inside the Europa Center entrance. With a practiced hand, he plucked a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and blotted beads of sweat from his brow. A heavy sigh departed his lungs as he tucked the handkerchief back into his pocket. He glanced down at his gray slacks and crimson boots, double-checking their post-battle presentability. Sweaty palms snaked over one another before coming to a folded rest upon his belt buckle.
An eerie silence filled the evacuated port. Small chunks of rubble rested on the lobby floor, the remnants of plasma gun impacts in the adjacent walls. Thin clouds of dust floated around the once sterile air, unable to escape through the damaged filtration system. Jai stared down the central corridor, studying the abandoned merchant booths in an effort to distract his tortured mind. Lord Essien’s battlecruiser had settled into orbit not too long ago. She occupied a soon-to-be docking service shuttle, carrying Jai’s unknown fate with her.
Two nervous henchmen dressed in dirty leisure suits stood on either side of Jai, serving to highlight his composed demeanor. One shook with a palpable fright while the other rapped his fingers on a plasma rifle.
“What do you think she’ll do, Jai?” the rifle henchman said.
“Shut up,” Jai said, maintaining his stare.
“I hope she doesn’t do what she did on Torg’vey.”
“Shut up.”
“Do you think she would? Her temper is the stuff of legends.”
“Shut up.”
“I mean, if she did, we might as well just shoot ourselves now.”
With a flick of the wrist, Jai unholstered his proton pistol and incinerated the pesky henchman with a point-blank shot to the chest. The piercing blast rumbled through the station as an ownerless rifle clanked onto the floor. A small cloud of gray ash enveloped the scene and fell like snow. Jai let out a muffled cough, cleared his throat, and dusted off his suit jacket. After a deep breath, he resumed his cold stare down the corridor. The other minion stopped shaking, opting for less visible forms of paralyzing fear like chattering teeth and an all-consuming desire to be anywhere else.
The gentle thump of a docking shuttle shifted Jai’s gaze to a nearby airlock. As the ship settled into position, its ghoulish black hull draped shadows over the clear tunnel. The airlock slid open with a puff of pressurized air. Two members of Lord Essien’s Black Guard stepped into the main tunnel, revealing the sharp bones, sunken cheeks, and deep purple skin of Varokin males. Their dark complexions melded into jet-black suits, creating ominous silhouettes in the bright corridor. Silver irises peered over the tops of plasma rifles as they secured the adjacent tunnels. Without a word, one of the guards nodded i
nto the open airlock.
An ethereal figure floated into the tunnel. An elegant blue scarf hung from her neck and flowed down her form-fitting black suit. Her business-like appearance seemed to sharpen the teardrop peak of her purple skull. Inky black lips sliced through the milky white tones of her chin and cheeks. A slow turn of her banded neck revealed Jai in the distance, eliciting a smirk of disgust. Her silvery eyes narrowed beneath their ebon sockets. The hollow clack of heels hitting composite echoed inside the tunnel as she stomped towards Jai with a menacing stride, her guards in tow. His hands tightened as a lump formed in his throat. Lord Essien halted her approach in front of Jai’s taut face, close enough to sample his breath. She buried visual daggers into his twitching eye sockets, causing him to swallow with a palpable anxiety.
“What up, dawg?” Lord Essien said, exposing her stark white teeth with a farcical expression.
The comical tone caught Jai off guard, resulting in a dumbfounded look of concern.
“What a stupid expression,” she said. “These humans, always butchering their dialects for the sake of some insecure uniqueness. I hate their languages. Every one of them feels like I’m chewing on a hunk of taffy that’s trying to escape.”
Jai shifted his jaw to the side, unsure of how to respond.
“But enough of this.” She waved her hand and turned away.
“Lord Essien, I—”
Essien spun her head around and pierced Jai with a scorching gaze that said nothing short of how dare you speak to me, you incompetent space maggot.
Receiving the message loud and clear, he shut his trap and gulped.
Essien smirked and softened her tone. “As I understand it, you let a Mulgawat courier and her prissy puss mechanic slip away with one of the most precious artifacts in all of existence ... the very same artifact that I trusted you to acquire, given your reputation and intimate knowledge of said Mulgawats. Am I mistaken?”
Jai’s lower jaw trembled.
“Don’t answer. It’s a tragic tale that I already know. I just wanted to say it out loud so that the gravity of the blunder could land upon your shoulders.”
The other henchman stepped forward. “Lord Essien, allow me to exp—” he said before being incinerated by the blast of a Black Guard plasma rifle.
A tight flinch seized Jai’s body, evoking a cold grin from an imposing Lord Essien. Jai closed his eyes and grunted as a second round of gray ash tickled his nostrils.
Lord Essien lowered her brow and voice. “That being said, your very existence depends on the answer to this next question.” Both members of the Black Guard turned their weapons to Jai. “Do you, Jai Ferenhal, know where those bitches went?”
Jai looked into Essien’s shimmering eyes and nodded.
* * *
The door slid open to Max’s room, providing him with yet another fright to his already jittered system. Enduring a fresh round of heavy panting, he jerked his hand to his chest as Perra walked into the room. She had traded her elegant evening gown for rows of gunmetal buckles atop a brown leather vest. Dark blue pants hung from her waist, revealing a strip of creamy orange flesh between the duds. Faint oil stains and numerous snap pockets adorned her legs, ending in a pair of black latch boots. A studded wrist brace, a rusty necklace, and a slick ponytail completed an ensemble that screamed steampunk mechanic. Perra leaned against the adjacent wall, giving Max a once-over before turning her attention to Ross.
“How is he feeling?”
“He’s doing better,” Ross said. “A little freaked, a little sore, but otherwise good.”
Max glanced back and forth between his apparent caretakers and threw his hands into the air. “Why not ask me?”
“Because she obviously views me as the superior intellect,” Ross said.
Max shot an annoyed glare at Ross, who responded with a smug smirk.
Perra snickered. “Sorry, Max. Ross has been quite helpful while you were unconscious.” With a swing of her hip, she lifted from the wall, stepped over to the bed, and took a seat next to Max. “So how’s your back? Do you need anything for the pain?”
“It’s fine, I guess.” Max rubbed the small of his back. “Thanks anyway.”
“You’re welcome. And allow me to apologize for earlier. We were under a lot of pressure to leave Europa. We did not intend for you to get caught up in this mess.”
“Nor was it my intention to get caught up.” Max offered a half-smile. “All things considered, I’m just glad we’re okay. My aimless adventure continues.”
“You mean our aimless adventure,” Ross said with a spot of bother.
“Oh, shut up.” Max shot another glare at Ross. “You’re the reason we’re here, Garfield.”
“That’s racist.”
“Speaking of here, where is here?” Max said to Perra.
“Oh, we are just outside of galaxy VC-832, what you call Andromeda.”
Max’s eyes widened as he pointed at the blank gray wall. “That ... is the Andromeda Galaxy?”
“Yes,” Perra said, glancing at the wall in confusion. “We are on our way to the interior rim to deliver an important package.”
With his arm and finger still outstretched, and a jaw that seemed to have thrown in the towel for the day, Max stood from the bed and stepped towards the wall. After battling a sudden onslaught of brain itch, he turned to face Perra. “But how is that even possible? We’re like two and a half million light-years from Earth.”
“Nothing a competent jump drive can’t handle,” Perra said with a cool confidence. She crossed her legs and cupped her hands around a knee.
“Oh c’mon,” Max said, squinting his eyes. “This isn’t science fiction. It’s not like we just traveled through a wormhole or anything.”
Ross rolled his eyes.
Perra smirked. “No, not exactly. I assume this was your first trip through hyperspace?”
“First time I have ever left Earth,” Max said with a twinge of embarrassment.
“Wow,” Perra said. She lowered her hands to the bed frame and donned an astonished expression. “No wonder you’re all disoriented.”
“No, that’s just his baseline,” Ross said.
Max glared at Ross, who responded with another smug smirk.
“So how does that even work?” Max returned to his seat next to Perra and gave her the undivided attention of a child yearning for story time.
“Good question,” Perra said, more than happy to chat about her expertise. She took a deep breath and adjusted her posture to that of a professor. “Jump drives work by locking onto a series of coordinates in open space. We input a set of interlocking distances that denote a single point of fixation. From there, the drive crushes a small clump of hydrogen atoms to create the gravitational equivalent of a neutron star.” Perra balled her fists and pantomimed the ongoing explanation. “It then focuses that gravitational pull onto the given coordinates and latches onto whatever is there, usually a neutrino particle, sometimes an atom of hydrogen or helium.” Her voice elevated with excitement as she delved into the logistics. “It hooks the fabric of space, like a claw on a blanket, and pulls the particle towards the ship at trillions of times the speed of light. In the process, it warps the region of space the particle occupies. When the particle reaches the ship, the space-time fabric rips, creating a brief hole for the ship to slip through. The rip engulfs the ship and slams shut. From there, the warped space-time fabric snaps back like a rubber band, taking the ship with it.”
Ross nodded like a proud sensei as Max’s jaw continued its muscle strike.
Perra sighed and folded her hands. “Unfortunately, we did not have time to verify proper coordinates. We could only punch in a distance and cross our fingers. And so, we pointed our nose to the black and grabbed whatever hook we could find. A dangerous maneuver, to say the least. There’s no telling what we could have collided with, but we came out okay. Zoey is a great pilot. She stabilized us pretty quick.”
Max donned a vacant expression as his s
puttering brain sifted through a deluge of questions. His mouth indulged in some freestyle stuttering as he sorted out the most pressing queries. Shaking his head, he settled on what seemed the most pertinent. “Trillions of times the speed of light? How is that possible?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Perra said with an amused tone.
“Because nothing can travel faster than light,” Max said with a limp confidence.
“I think we just proved that wrong,” Ross said with a note of sarcasm.
“Why bother explaining it to him?” Zoey said from the doorway. Her form-fitting pilot suit, with a dark gray base tone and midnight blue accents, seemed to complement the sleek-grit contrast of the ship. A single black zipper from waist to neck hung open at her chest, giving a casual vibe to her obvious authority. Her black latch boots matched Perra’s, but her heavier stride echoed atop the metal floor panels. Zoey rested a shoulder on the doorframe and glared at Max. “He’s an Earthling. Ergo, he suffers from an inferior intellect.”
“No arguments here,” Ross said.
Max glared at Ross, who responded with yet another smug smirk.
“I think it’s cute,” Perra said with a lighthearted tone. “He’s so naive, it’s adorable.” She pinched his cheek like a proud grandmother.
Max recoiled and batted her hand away, feeling the sting of emasculation.
Ross decided that imminent grooming duties trumped the remaining conversation.
“Perra, a word,” Zoey said with a hardened gaze, then disappeared into the cargo bay.
Perra sighed. “Be right back.” Rising from the bed, she gave Max a pat on the shoulder. She walked through the door and met eyes with a perturbed Zoey, standing with arms crossed at the rear of the room. Perra bit the inside of her cheek as she sauntered over to Zoey’s tapping foot. “Yes, honey?” she said with a hint of derision.
Zoey switched to Korish to conceal the conversation. “Don’t make light of this. We are already dealing with enough without having to look after them.”
Max and the Multiverse, #1 Page 10