“With my eyes closed—they’re still using Kleezebee’s software. Didn’t even bother to change the vid-saver. BTX Enterprises is Kleezebee’s real estate development company back home.”
Lucas didn’t see a mouse or keyboard, so he touched the screen to deactivate the screen saver. He read the status indicators. “That doesn’t make any sense. It says it’s still connected to Silo 3.”
“Where’s that?” Rico asked.
“In a galaxy far, far away.”
Rico seemed puzzled. He cleared his throat, catching Lucas’ attention.
“It’s not anywhere on this planet, or in this universe, for that matter,” Lucas said. “It’s one of Kleezebee’s underground missile silos on my Earth. But it’s much too distant to be a viable destination.”
“So, then—what? We’re done?” T-Rex asked, taking a step toward the exit.
“I didn’t say that. Just give me a second to think.”
“It has to lead somewhere. Otherwise, why would Cyrus bother guarding it?” Rico asked.
Lucas nodded. “Cyrus must have hardcoded the connection. But the real question is why park one of these here, in Flandreau City?”
“Because of its strategic value. The Mag-Lift’s central hub is here, at least what’s left of it,” Rico said.
“If that’s true, then the other end is probably connected to his base camp, where he trains his men,” T-Rex said.
“New Robyn City,” Rico replied. He looked at Lucas. “Do you think that’s where he’s storing the BioTex?”
“There’s only one way to find out: Someone has to take a road trip,” Lucas said, smiling. He looked at T-Rex.
“Not me,” T-Rex said, shuffling his feet back two steps. “I’m not getting into that thing.”
“This? This you’re afraid of?” Lucas almost sneered. He wondered what was next. Clowns or needles?
“Me and technology don’t see eye to eye.”
Stonebridge stepped forward. He cocked his rifle and looked at Rico. “I’ll go, sir. No need for anyone else to take the risk.”
“Stand down, Sergeant. I need you to watch our six,” Rico said, pointing his rifle toward the entrance behind him.
“But . . . sir?”
“That’s an order, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir,” Stonebridge said, dejected, marching to the door. He stood outside the entrance, with his back to the room.
Rico’s eyes inspected the vertical cylinder from top to bottom. “Looks like there’s only room for one.”
“Yep. That’s by design. The system can only process one molecular pattern at a time. Otherwise, the bio-signatures would mix and you’d be reconstituted as a blob.”
“Good safety tip, Doc. Thanks.”
“Then I guess you better count me in,” T-Rex said. “What about Stonebridge?”
“Someone needs to stay behind in case we don’t make it back. Make sure he reports in with Kleezebee as soon as we’re across.”
“So I’m going, too?” Lucas asked.
Rico nodded. “Someone’s got to get us home from the other side.”
“What are the chances this is a one-way trip?” T-Rex asked.
“Less than none,” Lucas said, inspecting the equipment rack. “There has to be an active jump pad on the other end for this system to work. All we need to do is reverse the process and bingo, you’re back in Kansas, Dorothy.”
“What’s your mother got to do with this?” Rico asked.
“Nothing. Never mind,” Lucas replied, feeling like the alien in this colony of humans. “Just trust me. It won’t be a problem.”
He scratched the injection point on his arm, pulling off the soft scab that had been forming. More blood oozed out. He checked his watch: nine hours and change. He held up his wrist to show Rico. “Do we have enough time?”
“More than enough. Now, fire up this thing before I change my mind.”
Lucas entered a few commands on the touch-screen and then stood back. “You guys are gonna love this.”
A seductive female voice said, “Please step onto the pad. Activation sequence will begin in thirty seconds. Remember not to hold your breath.”
“Sexy, huh? Think she’s as hot as all your girlfriends?”
Rico smiled, then stepped onto the pad, pulling his shredder rifle in close to his chest. He turned around and faced Lucas.
Stonebridge stepped forward and gave all four bricks of plastic explosive to Rico, along with a handful of blasting caps. “You might need these, sir.”
Rico stuffed them inside the pouches on his duty belt. He looked at Lucas. “Now what?”
Lucas put his index finger close to the ENGAGE button on the screen. “Now, I just have to press this last button, and—”
Lights flashed and a high-decibel alarm blared through the room. Then the same electronic voice said, “This is a weapons-free zone! Please discard you weapon immediately. You have twenty seconds to comply or a nerve agent will be released.”
Rico jumped off the pad and pointed his rifle at the computer console.
“Easy, Rico! It was a joke. There’s no nerve agent.”
T-Rex laughed.
“Not funny, Doc,” Rico said, sneering at his laughing comrade. Zack stopped laughing instantly. Rico lowered his weapon.
“Sorry. Couldn’t resist. I figured since Cyrus hadn’t changed any of Kleezebee’s software that his system would react the same way to a weapon as it did back on Earth.”
Rico’s eyes flared. “Can we please focus on the mission?”
Lucas nodded. He used a backdoor access path on the console to log in and turn off the alarm message. “All clear. Go ahead.”
Rico returned to the pad, stepped inside, and turned around. His face looked tense, as the clear cylinder’s doors wrapped around him, sealing him inside.
“It’s important not to hold your breath,” Lucas said in a louder voice. “Just relax and breathe in and out normally. It’ll be over in a flash.”
“Will I feel anything?”
“Not really. It’s like floating in a dream.”
“What about his weapon and the explosives?” T-Rex asked. “Won’t they get mixed in on the other end?”
“That only happens with bio-matter. Inanimate objects like clothes and guns are fine. The computer can differentiate them from living tissue.”
T-Rex nodded with raised eyebrows.
Lucas reset the system and pressed the Engage button. He looked at Rico. “Enjoy your trip.”
The device activated, sending streams of swirling blue and orange specs of light up from the bottom like the colored stripes on a barber pole. They danced around Rico’s body, slowly covering him from head to toe. A minute later, he was gone and the chamber was empty.
“That’s it?” T-Rex asked.
“Yeah, what’d you expect?”
“Some kind of sound, at least.”
“It doesn’t work that way. Not when you’re being disassembled at the sub-atomic level. It’s all done electronically.”
T-Rex shrugged.
“Look at it this way—you can’t hear the quantum memory crystals working away inside a computer, can you?”
“No.”
“So, there you go. Same thing. No sound.”
T-Rex nodded right before he tapped the face on his communicator watch. “Hammer here. . . . Roger that, Sledge. Hammer out.”
“Was that Rico? Where’s he at?”
“Not sure yet. The major said he’s underground in some type of industrial complex. I’m to go through next. Then you. Understood?”
“Sure,” Lucas said, readying the jump pad system for another transport. “Go ahead and step in. The system’s ready.”
T-Rex squeezed his massive frame into the four-foot-wide virtual tube and turned to face out. The tube’s doors swung around and pinned him in.
“Remember to—” Lucas said.
“—breathe normally. Got it, Doc. Press the damned button already.”
; Lucas pressed the ENGAGE button and T-Rex was gone in a flash. “Sergeant, can you come over here for a minute? I need to show you how to operate this unit.”
Stonebridge entered the room and walked to the console. He stood on Lucas’ right. “I’m not sure I’m qualified for this.”
Lucas pointed at the touch screen. “It’s simple. All you need to do it press this button. But wait until I’m inside and the doors are closed. I’ll tell you when to press it. Okay?”
Stonebridge nodded. “Sounds easy enough.”
Just then, the traveler screamed inside his thoughts—Time realizes peace immediately after all transitory senses!
“Fuck off,” Lucas told the traveler in a dull mumble.
“What?” Stonebridge asked.
“Nothing. Just talkin’ to myself.”
A look of concern grew on Stonebridge’s face.
Lucas shut his eyes and slipped into his thoughts. He let out a sigh of relief when he didn’t hear any more of the traveler’s thoughts. He opened his eyes and walked to the jump pad opening. He slipped the shredder rifle over his shoulder and stepped inside. He turned to face Stonebridge. “Go ahead. I’m ready.”
Stonebridge moved his hand toward the screen. A moment later, Lucas felt lightheaded and a bit woozy. He concentrated on his breathing, moving the air in and out of his lungs with calm consistency.
A second later, he was standing alone in a grassy meadow the size of a city block.
THIRTEEN
“What the hell?” Lucas mumbled, feeling groggy, and his head was pounding. He looked in all directions, but didn’t see Rico or T-Rex, just a thick border of majestic, orange-colored trees in every direction. This obviously wasn’t an underground industrial complex. Did T-Rex just lie to him?
He stood still and waited. Two minutes passed with no sign of his friends. This must have been how Drew felt after he and Abby stepped through the portal to the hive ship, only to end up somewhere foreign and unexpected. His nerves were on high alert.
“Come on, guys, I’m here,” he shouted, walking toward the middle of the clearing. There was no response. “This isn’t funny. Where the hell are you?” He listened, but again, no answer; there was only the sounds of birds singing, water breaking, and a gentle breeze rustling through the treetops.
He scanned the strikingly flat meadow, looking for clues. There weren’t any footprints or other tracks through the grass other than his. If he weren’t in such a panic, it would have been the perfect spot for that romantic picnic with Carrie Anne. Not that he could ever find this place again.
A whistling gust of wind rose up out of the east, smacking him in the face, swaying the budding stalks of pale-brown grass. He turned away to protect his eyes from the flying dirt and grass sprouts.
He thought about the time between transports and realized the trees were too far away for Rico and T-Rex to hide in before he arrived. This couldn’t be a trap. He’d have to be asleep or blitzed not to notice that he wasn’t in an industrial building, so something had obviously gone haywire. His mind shifted to a memory involving Stonebridge standing in front of the computer console. The sergeant wasn’t the brightest man he’d ever met, but still, how hard was it to press a button on a screen? Lucas decided Stonebridge hadn’t fucked this up.
He tapped his communicator watch. “Rico? T-Rex? Come in.” He waited. Nothing. Then he remembered their handles, thinking they wouldn’t answer his hail unless he followed protocol. He didn’t have a handle, so he made one up. “Sledge? Hammer? This is Solo. Can you guys hear me?” The device remained silent. He waited another long minute for a response. None came. “Jesus Christ, now what?”
Lucas looked south, just above the treetops and saw a black speck that seemed to be flying in his direction. It was traveling from right to left across the mostly cloudless sky. The tiny dot grew larger with each passing second until Lucas could identify it as a pair of yellow-crested birds with wide, black-and-white-feathered wings. The duo soared atop the steady wind, keeping a precise distance apart from each other.
He watched the birds bank left, changing to an intercept course, arriving above the meadow in just seconds. They separated from each other, flying in opposing elliptical orbits just above the tree line bordering the area. Lucas figured they were keeping an eye on him, waiting for him to succumb to the exhausting heat of the fast-rising sun.
His stomach gurgled an erratic tune; it was empty. He smiled. “Chance favors the prepared mind.” He reached for the shredder rifle that he had slung over his shoulder before stepping onto the jump pad, but the gun wasn’t there. Neither was the extra ammo clip stuffed in his back pocket. What the hell? Had he dropped them somewhere along the way while he was woozy? He brushed the waist-high grass away, searching the dirt around his feet; there was no sign of the weapon or the ammo. He widened his search area to thirty feet, then retraced his steps through the trampled grass to the point at which he arrived. Still nothing.
“Damn it,” he said, watching the easy food circle above him. He licked his lips. “Next time, you two are dinner.”
Lucas read his watch and calculated the time left until his wrist exploded: Seven hours, twenty-four minutes. Wait, that can’t be right. Should have been eight-something. He had lost an hour somewhere. He remembered feeling sleepy when he arrived. Had he been unconscious? If so, why was he standing when he woke up?
He tried to recall the moments just before he arrived, but the memory flickered, just out of reach. It felt like a glimmer of a thought—one that hadn’t formed completely. He shut his eyes and focused his concentration. He almost had it, but it was fading. He made a desperate grab at the memory and missed, coming up with an empty handful of nothing. Then the thought slipped out of view and ran dry.
His pulsating headache was worse than before—probably due to the stress of his situation. He wondered if he’d bumped his head while he was inside the jump pad chamber.
Cognitive memory is your own naive accomplishment to easily garnish random, heaping ectoplasm, the traveler said from the deepest echoes of his mind.
“Ectoplasm? Seriously?” Lucas answered back. “I really don’t need this crap right now.”
He looked around. Nothing was familiar. A cloud-wrapped mountain peak rose up beyond the trees, near where the birds had first appeared. It looked to be several miles away, maybe more.
“Where should I go?” Lucas asked the mental hitchhiker, even though he knew the answer would be twaddle.
Undue rain hinders each day’s descent into another newfound nexus.
Lucas nodded, even though the words were nonsense. Perhaps there’s a town nearby, he thought. Hopefully, they’ll have a bar. He needed a stiff drink. He wondered if he got shit-faced, would it calm the voice inside him? Maybe he’d get lucky and put the noisy bastard to sleep for a while. He figured it was worth a shot—or three, he mused.
Lucas made his way across the meadow, now only twenty feet from the tree line. The mountaintop was out of sight, blocked by the towering trees in his path ahead. He’d have to guess at the direction of travel from here. He entered the forest just as a bellowing roar came from deep inside its depths. It echoed through the forest, connecting with the marrow in his bones. He recognized the distinctive wail: Taku Beast.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Another howl rang out, vibrating the ground and rattling the trees—even they were terrified. The beast sounded much closer. The skin across his body tightened. It must be the female Kleezebee warned him about. He didn’t stand a chance against its twelve-inch razor-sharp claws, not without the shredder rifle. He wanted to run, but his legs wouldn’t move.
Twigs snapped and tree branches cracked, it was maybe thirty feet ahead, he wasn’t sure. Then he heard crying, human crying. It was a female, but she sounded young. The bushes in front of him parted, and something three-foot-tall came racing through them.
“Help me! Somebody help me!” a little blond-headed girl cried out. She looked back in
to the brush, then nearly stumbled over an exposed two-inch tree root, as she bee-lined straight for Lucas. “It’s coming. Help me! Please!”
The girl—maybe nine years old—wearing a yellow sundress and a rosy face drenched in tears, jumped into his arms and wrapped her trembling hands around his neck. Her build was slight, but she still almost knocked Lucas off his feet. He wrapped his forearms around her slender waist, holding her tight against his chest.
Her sobs penetrated his body, melting the darkest corners of his heart. “I got you,” he said. “It’ll be all right.” He leaned back to see her face. “My name is Lucas. What’s your name?”
“Maggie.”
“Where are your mom and dad?”
“I’m all alone,” she said, sending a torrent of tears down her soft, pink cheeks. He could feel her rib cage pressing against his arms. There wasn’t much meat on her bones. He wondered if she was lost, or abandoned. Possibly living in the wild and starving to death. Except, her dress and skin were clean, and her hair was combed and smelled fresh. It didn’t make sense.
Another ground-shaking howl rang out—no echoes this time. Shit, a bloody death was close.
“Please, Lucas! It’s coming!” she cried.
He didn’t know which way to run. He looked left: there was only dense forest as far as his eyes could see, too thick to run through. A sixty-foot-tall rock formation was to the right, embedded into the side of a sloped hill, maybe twenty yards away, with what looked like a cave entrance near the top. He considered his two choices: Climb the boulders or run into the grass-covered meadow with no defensible position. He decided the cave at the top of the rock pile was the best option.
Lucas sprinted with Maggie in his arms, trying not to drop her, as he trampled leaves and deadfall along the way. He needed to get inside the cave before the creature arrived. Maybe the beast wouldn’t find them there. He wasn’t sure, but it was the best of his two bad choices.
He climbed onto the first level of uneven, two-foot-wide jagged rocks. It wasn’t easy to keep his balance with his feet slipping on the damp, moss-laden surface and the extra weight hanging on his chest, but he managed to step across the rocks and work his way up to the next level. He looked back—no sign of the beast, yet. Keep moving, he told himself.
Incursion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 2) Page 10