Parallel Extinction (Extinction Encounters Book 1)

by T. R. Stevens

  She paid particular attention to retaining as much of the modular construction as possible. It needed to be easy for the crews who were to do the reconstruction. She specified a nano-glue for quick reassembly, and a low-tech substitute if that wasn’t available.

  Within an hour she believed she had a solid answer to the problem of a simple containment for the creature. The one part that nagged at her, the thing that the admiral had specified that she not attempt to resolve, was the lure; the bait. She had a bad feeling about what the man might have in mind. She did her best to set the concern aside, hoping that her work would save lives and not cost them. She remembered this sinking feeling all too well.

  She set the delivery timing of the message so that the admiral would receive it after he had a chance to grant the requisition. It was now 0130.

  Tasimov was looking forward to seeing the odd scientist, Cooper. She was sure that the camaraderie—so counterfeit within the larger group of her former colleagues—would be real with this eccentric man that she’d never before had a chance to know.

  CHAPTER 64

  EVENT: DAY 17, 2300 UT

  Emerging in Human Reality, seventeen human days had slid by.

  Time had passed since their captivity, but, because of their nature, time was nothing, a non-concept. And then, for them, conceptualizing was a non-reality. Purpose was not searched for. Function was key. They just were. And with each manifestation from their birth-universe, an equalizing balance was reestablished, ushering dark matter into the universe, replacing matter lost through black hole matter-sinks.

  If a human were able to experience reality as these beings did, the closest analog might be something like standing still in the center of a carousel, as it spun at a blurring rate, while the entire arrangement moved through an all-encompassing panorama of melted rainbow light.

  The passing of energy through their fields met the need of their existence. The sweetness of a particular energy, existing only in this universe of all that they traversed, filled even the smallest space in the nothingness that they were.

  The sweet flavor, now searched for by these two, would help balance the record of sour energy that had been so recently forced through their space-time-foam reality.

  Oddly, many pockets of this sweet energy surrounded each of their imprisoned Kind. It allowed for a reward to these autonomous beings as they began the task of releasing their own from the shatterable gravity wells.

  Upon that first and sudden release of the two Elementals from the spherical Gravity Rejector cages, a course had been set: it was the rectification of imbalance. An equilibrium that had grown increasingly lopsided as man had taken and imprisoned each of these entities was being redressed. An ingrained need to address this imbalance drove them now.

  Each hunting Elemental rippled a change through the fabric of space-time. The ripple was codified; it said, in a script only these beings could ever sense or interpret: We are coming.

  CHAPTER 65

  EVENT: DAY 17, 2355 UT

  The Vanden Belt was the equivalent of Sol System’s Oort cloud.

  Over billions of years, a slight rotation had flattened the sphere to a thick band-ring of meteoroids, asteroids and rocky planetoids. It encircled the entire Sirius A-B binary system.

  Celestial Wheel station hung in the void, above the Belt’s gravitational plane, over the inside edge.

  The Wheel was in happy space, a spacer term for relatively crowded system locales known to be free of any long and short-term orbiting trajectories. It was one of only a few re-supply depots that serviced the terrologists in their longer-range endeavors. It sat nearer to the inner edge of Second Level space. Second Level space was largely relegated to the SciPod ships, their discoveries logged either for future settlement or future exploitation.

  Jeremy Kelleher was on Sky Scan, the most tedious job on-wheel. The saving grace was the weightlessness that came with this particular job. Almost everybody who worked or lived on the Wheel remained on the ever-turning spindeck. Aside from health reasons, the deck made up ninety-five percent of habitable space aboard. There were a few who escaped the rule, and J. Kelleher was one of them. A genetic defect that gave his bones greater density made him the perfect candidate; he was proud of the defect—BUMP had told him that his genetics might contribute to future heavy-world settlers’ genes. But he was still expected to do his exercises and spend time on-deck.

  His vantage point was from the inside of a clear, crysteel sphere, five meters across, attached to the kilometer-long skate-tube that protruded from the wheel hub. The tube was named for the crawler platform that one lay down on, which then skated out the narrow tube to the bulb at the end. From space, the arrangement looked like an old-fashioned thermometer upended at the center of a bike wheel.

  Kelleher’s job was to monitor the inner surface of the transparent sphere, upon which was projected a map of the stars visible beyond the bubble. The holomap pressed into the sphere by about a meter of three-dimensional relief. It had been a secret pleasure, at first, for Jeremy to roll around in the stars, as he slowly drifted in the sphere. Now it was simply a beautiful sight that he never got tired of. The actual stars outside added an additional layer of depth to it all.

  The AI monitored near space for any anomalies, extending to ten thousand clicks, displaying the data into his projected starfield. He would attempt visual beyond the sphere, if possible. Also, he was the eye in the sky for ship comm and approach. Nothing came or went without Sky Scan overview.

  When the AI reported an unknown object on approach, with no traceable vector, it didn’t make much sense. Nothing showed in the visible wavelengths. He switched on all other spectrums. He could then see the coloration of all the various radiations that were constantly bombarding his little, shielded bubble. He could find nothing moving in any sort of approach vector.

  In the few seconds that it took him to do this, the AI seem to experience a meltdown. It retracted its approach warning, but in the middle of the retraction, it skipped right back to the report of a vectorless approach. Jeremy swore at the faceless voice, then commanded, “Audio off.” The sphere returned to a comfortable silence. He was about to tune the wavelength reception back to visible light, when a strange feeling of déjà vu descended upon him. Oddly, the spectrum display had switched back to normal on its own.

  He shook his head to settle his twisting perception, trying to make sense of the change. What was that strange feeling? It came on him again; he wanted to vomit.

  As he worried about the consequences of being sick, everything changed. He didn’t feel sick any more, but it really didn’t matter; something so much more dramatic, frightening, and confusing commanded all of his awareness.

  Jeremy Kelleher was inside something.

  Reality had skipped and he had been entrapped. His crysteel sphere had morphed to a cube shape. His vision was now limited to a narrow field of view. And yet, this was not the most frightening change.

  Claustrophobia, brought on by a lack of any bodily sensation, combined with the feeling that something else was in here with him. He could not see the something, but he felt sure it was made of spinning razor blades—and it wanted to eat him.

  Doubly paradoxical, inside his cubed reality, bodiless, he had no sense of weightlessness as he should. Instead he was leaden, cowering in a corner of this trap. He feared the unseen beast, as he watched things happen outside of these walls.

  He did not understand. Jeremy could see that he was moving out of the sphere, lying down on the skate, his hands out in front of him, holding handles on the transport platform. My hands? How can those be my hands? His inner voice rose to a scream, WHAT IS HAPPENING? He could not feel his hands, could not feel them gripping those handles.

  He watched the skate-tube walls whiz by. Moving into a solid portion, it went dark; the skate transitioned to the spiraling section, where it was matched to the Wheel’s c
entral spin. The light from the station shone like a spotlight in the dark ahead, growing as he slid closer.

  He was terrified at what would happen next, that blood was about to be shed; flesh shredded. He did not know why he was still alive. Maybe I’m not? Maybe whatever had attacked him was some sort of ghostly Shrike, invisible razors ready to slice apart its victims. Maybe his body lay back in the sphere, bloodied and torn. But my hands? They were silhouetted in the growing light from ahead. Possessed? I must be possessed. His blood ran cold as demon superstitions, old as man, came to life.

  His ride ended.

  When Kelleher slid to a stop at the end of the skate run, two crewmembers, a man and a woman who managed the equipment at the bottom of the tube, had some things to say to him. Carlson was yelling at him to get his ass back out to the sphere; Kelan, expressing concern, was asking what was the matter. Kelleher watched dumbfounded as Kelan stopped in mid-sentence and shook her head, with a look of disorientation that he recognized. He wanted to scream for her to run, but, had he been able to, it would have been too late.

  The confusion melted off her face, her eyes taking on a glazed look as the second of the two invaders took his stationmate. With a jerk upright, she turned in the fractional gravity, and pushed off towards the closest of the eight hatches that led to the spindeck.

  As Carlson caught her motion, he turned his attention and anger toward her. His voice rose in volume when she ignored him.

  Kelleher watched helplessly, seeing his own hands rise into his boxed-in viewpoint, which now framed Carlson. The man’s shouts turned into a gurgle, turning an astonished look towards Kelleher. Without an understanding of what was happening to him, his eyes bugged, giving his face a grotesque appearance. It was further amplified, as his hair began wriggling, retracting into his head. His facial skin was undergoing rapid changes. Were it not for the circumstances, this would have been an improvement; the man underwent a bizarre youthening, losing his grizzled, scarred appearance, quickly becoming more attractive.

  Kelleher’s brain was short-circuiting, failing to hold all of this strangeness as it was forced upon him. Simultaneously, a roar of energy surrounded him. This thundering sound and the disembodied presence within his altered reality gave the lie to positive change that he witnessed—Carlson’s gain was just a cruel taunt by the evil demon possessor. And just so, the man’s face did not retain its new youth. In the next moment, Carlson’s head began to shrink. The hair lengthened again, then shortened, as if out of some horror vid. It moved all about in a phantom wind. All the while the shocked, horror-struck look remained frozen into his features.

  Further it went, and the man-become-boy began to sink lower to the floor, his unisuit crumpling in an accordion-like fashion.

  The moment seemed to stretch, but in real time, it was rather quick before there was nothing left of the man but an infant’s head bulging from the collar of his unisuit. Ballooning horribly for a moment, an infantile cry escaped its throat.

  The head finally succumbed to the downward tilting movement of the fetus that it had become. That action pulled its tiny, shrunken body out through the collar of the outfit. In the fractional gravity, the naked, immobile shape drifted gently to rest atop the piled clothing.

  Just as Jeremy’s agonized vision was redirected, he saw the little body begin to twitch.

  Inside his torture chamber, Jeremy Kelleher was screaming. He could see that he was next being moved toward a different hatch than the one that Kelan had used. No, no, no, NOOO… He tried to exert his will to stop; it made no difference. He clambered into the ladder tube feet first, just as he would have were he controlling his own body. After a steady weight gain, dropping outward to spindeck, the elevator disc-hatch began to lower him to the deck. Klaxons began to sound at that moment. The horror was spreading.

  And his nightmare expanded. His forced participation in the escalating gruesome atrocity was accompanied by a mind-wasting shriek of energy as Kelleher sucked the life out of one bewildered stationmate after another. His sanity was being torn away as if it were so much dust.

  Unfortunately for the technician, insult was heaped upon injury when his possessing Elemental found a preferred female form for its vehicle of destruction.

  It ripped its influence from his body, leaving him in a thunder-clap of perceived agony where he stood, his voice returning in a blood-curdling scream. His first ‘razor blade’ vision came to be reality—the forward half of his body was cleaved and torn off; the flesh-separating sensation raked images of blood and gore through his mind.

  He barely had time to realize that he was undamaged, as a second later, the new host, and a woman he knew well—even secretly loved—sucked his life away.

  CHAPTER 66

  EVENT: DAY 18, 0045 UT

  “Freddy, we’ve got to do something.”

  Jessica’s voice was pleading in Comani’s head. “The Elementals have just attacked the Wheel Station. Oh, Freddy, so many souls have just been lost. And two more survivors just like you. Freddy, you’ve got to help them. Please get to them before the military can. We’ve seen what they do to these type of survivors.”

  Comani was strapped into the sleep cubby couch aboard the Quantum Butterfly; he began a heavily accented shout, “Capitanos, Capitanos.”

  After the latest fourteen-hour stint of systems checks and equipment repairs, it was nearly time to take off from Eighre Masc. The cubby door had been sealed already; the doctor hollered into his helmet. The damaged suit comm system, repaired to a degree by Garrison, did not have volume dampening. The yell punched into the eardrums of his weary hosts as they winced.

  Dominique quickly replied, “Doctor, please do not shout. Just speak in a normal voice.”

  Garrison, shaking his head to clear the assault on his eardrums, said with some irritation, “Yeah, it’s not like you have to scream through the door.”

  Fortunately, Garrison had his suit’s external speaker off, helmets sealed, so Center was not privy to the conversation. Comani went on, talking more quietly, though no less excitedly. His unchecked accent made his words more unintelligible than usual. “Elementals! They have attack to Celesteel. We need get to it, pronto. Urgente salvataggio. My Jessie, she say due survivors we must to rescue.” The words came in a tumbled rush.

  Garrison looked at Dominique through the suits’ faceplates, his forehead creasing, and mouthed the words, What the hell?

  She shook her head, but what he had said sounded serious. “Doctor, could you please say again, more slowly?”

  The upset man’s breath was loud in the helmets. He panted before he made an attempt to be more comprehensible. “Amici miei, I sorry. My Jessica, she has tell me now, the things attack. They are attack to Celestial Wheel station. She say all lost, but…” he paused in his reiteration, listening to a voice in his head, “she say due donne still live. Please, Captainos, can we go to them now? Jessie is scared of what military will do to women, like other survivors.” He took a deep breath.

  Dominique and Garrison held each other’s widening gazes as the story became clear. It was a disaster—if it was true. Doubt assailed Garrison. The whole ghost story hadn’t settled well and completely for him. There could be no doubt about certain realities; the fetuses were proof enough of that. But Garrison had not decided whether or not the scientist wasn’t simply out of his mind. That would be entirely believable. The man had witnessed that insane horror back at the scow.

  There were plenty of unanswered questions, and Garrison certainly wanted to be involved in finding some of the answers. There was no doubt that Admiral Swan had intentionally put them in mortal danger, but there was still an unfinished agenda: get the scientist back into BUMP’s hands. So far, he and Dominique had managed to avoid whatever it was that had done the damage to those ships. They were getting close to having completed the mission, as described, without tripping over the threatened court-martial. If the
y now took this man’s ravings seriously, following his wishes across the galaxy to Celestial station, there was little doubt that Garrison, and probably Dominique too, would have a cozy cell waiting when it was all over.

  He refocused on Dominique’s expression, reading some upset directed at him, and he realized he’d been shaking his head. The communication options were limited due to the crude repairs to the suit comms; he had the external speaker switch off, and could either speak within the suit, controlling what Center heard, or they could take off the helmets to talk privately, out of the doctor’s hearing. But Center would then overhear.

  Oh well, the man might as well know where he stands with me. Garrison said aloud, “Dominique, we have no confirmation that what he is saying is true. And we can’t go asking Center; they’d have a few questions of their own, aimed right back at us. We should complete the mission and get the doctor the help he needs.” He used his gloved hand, pointing at his head, making a twirling motion.

  The look on her face told him that she was upset with him for having slighted the man’s sanity, but she only had her own hunches to go on and no proof as to his stability or lack thereof.

  As she was considering this, the voice of Center, suddenly and without any preceding alerts, came over the comm. “Quantum Butterfly One, please confirm audio…”

  Garrison said quickly, “Everybody quiet, switching on speaker… Yes, Center, Bartell here, are you reading us?”

  The response was delayed and curt. “Affirmative, Center out.”

  Once Garrison had restored privacy, Dominique said, “Okay, no more hand gestures. We talk with faces down. Remember, we are being watched.”