“Look out!” The Warden drew his blasters and fired on the three phasal anomalies.
The glowing bolts went through them as if they were nothing more than holograms. The ghostly crewmen reached Chan. One of the errant blaster bolts struck the food printer behind him. It exploded in a shower of sparks and arcs of electricity.
The lights came up, and gravity was restored. The Warden shut his eyes at the blinding effect on his visor as he toppled to the floor. With a grunt he switched back to normal vision.
“What the hell was that?” Rook growled as he tried to regain his feet.
“Chan! He’s gone!” Brock shouted. She cast a hateful glance at the Warden. “Look! He’s got his guns out. He tried to kill me and Chan!”
“No.” Strega said. The big saurian hadn’t been upended by the sudden change in gravity, owing to his thick toe talons digging into the carpeted floor. “Warden fired on ghostsss.”
“Phasal anomalies,” Quantum said, returning to his feet. “I saw them, too. They were somehow… banished by the explosion of the appliance, though that may have been a coincidence.”
“You know what Einstein said about coincidences,” Ramirez said as she stepped to the smoking food printers. “These are older models, they run on direct current. You think that might have something to do with your ‘phasal anomalies’?”
“More importantly,” Rook said, looking at his wrist chrono. “That blackout was caused by a massive spike in energy. And that spike is still climbing.”
The Warden headed for the door. “We need to get back to the lab.”
---
As the others followed the Warden from the cafeteria, Rook grabbed Brock by the arm. “I want you to go to sickbay,” he whispered in her ear. “Space the nut-job recuperating up there. With no surviving crew, the Star Warden and his blue pal have no reason to stand in the way of our salvage. Even if this… whatever it is down there turns out to be too hot to handle, everything on this station is ours.”
Narrowing her blue eyes, Brock gave one curt nod and set off back up the spiraling corridor to the right. Rook turned left and went after the others.
Rounding the curved wall outside the lab’s prep room, he saw a violent purple and crimson glow washing over the entire corridor. The strange illumination came from the prep room’s opened door. When Rook looked in to see the source, he sagged against the doorframe, mouth slack and eyes wide.
The Warden, his Mechtechan friend, Strega, and Ramirez stood just inside the room, apparently just as stunned. The other side of the chamber was gone, just an opened hole into space. The ragged edges of that hole writhed and glimmered with the violet and garnet light. So fascinating was the spectacle that it took Rook a moment to realize the view of open space shifted from vista to impossible vista.
“What the hell…?”
“Everybody out,” the Warden said. “Hurry! We’ve got to seal this chamber.”
When everyone was safely outside the prep room, the Warden activated the door’s mag lock. The action gave the illusion of safety, but they had all seen the impossible horror on the other side of the thin wall of insulated aluminum and PlaSteel.
For a moment or two, no one spoke.
Rook cleared his throat. “What the hell is that? How come we weren’t spaced through that breach?”
The Mechtechan was nonplussed. “Because that is not a breach into space. At least not as you understand it. This station is still intact, more or less.”
Ramirez shook her head. She was pale, her jaw tight. “I don’t understand.”
The Warden answered. “The station is entering the space-time slip, just like the crew... But how, Quantum? I thought you said it only affected biological matter.”
The alien’s brow arched over his big black left eye, antennae writhing. “The energy cycle. It must have reached a threshold of some kind, whereby the rate of cycle has increased exponentially. There is no way to tell how quickly the slip will grow, but eventually the entire station and all aboard it will be trapped as phasal anomalies in the space-time continuum.
“There is also no way to tell just how big the slip will become. It could continue to grow until it devours this entire system, or possibly more…”
A woman’s scream from somewhere above ended the conversation.
“Where’s Brock?” the Warden asked Rook.
“Don’t know. She was right behind me.” He turned and led the group up the spiraling corridor, headed for sickbay.
---
Unearthly moans surrounded them every step of the way. The time shadows’ suffering seemed to increase in proportion to the size of the growing rift. The Warden tried not to imagine the agony those poor people were going through. An agony he was unable to end.
Brock lay sprawled just outside the medical facility. The Warden knelt beside the stunned engineer. A deep cut marred her forehead. But she was alive.
“The crewman… Carter. He’s gone.” Ramirez swept the empty med bay with her submachinegun. “Looks like Brock released him.”
“He’s… got my gun,” Brock slurred.
The Warden helped the groggy woman to her feet. “Get her in there and check her out. As soon as she can talk, I’ve got some questions for her… In the meantime, I think you and I should have a chat, Captain.”
Rook’s wolfish grin returned. “Happy to oblige, Warden.”
The Warden motioned him to follow. “And you can leave Strega behind. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Rook chuckled as if to say, I’d like to see you try.
A dozen meters from the med bay, the Warden halted in the alcove of a darkened lounge area. “Okay, Rook, let’s put our cards on the table. We’ve established you knew about whatever is—or was down in that lab, and that’s why you’re here. Not because of the distress call.”
Rook feigned innocence. “You wound me, Warden.”
“I’m betting you sent Brock up here to remove Carter from the equation, freeing you up to salvage the entire station. But here’s the rub, Captain: if we don’t work together and figure out a way to stop what’s happening down on the lowest tier, there won’t be a station to salvage.”
Rook shrugged. “There’s still enough untended equipment on the upper tiers to make this a profitable venture, even with the loss of two of my crew, Warden. And if that’s the play I decide to make, I don’t think you and your blue friend can stop me.”
The Warden sighed. Maybe he and Quantum could stop the looters, but at what cost? A shootout on a dying space station that would only result in a few more corpses—an act of “justice” far removed from any inhabited system. Rook was just like the medical robot he’d destroyed. He didn’t recognize Star Law. At least not as the Warden did.
“All right. Get your people together and take as much as you can in the next hour. Then get off this station.”
Rook’s smile faltered. “I thought you wanted our help.”
The Warden still clung to the fading hope of repairing the breach and freeing the doomed crew from their tormented existence as “ghosts.” And, in the back of his mind lurked the desperate thought of somehow using the gate to get back to his own place in time. That slim, selfish hope hinged on the cooperation of Rook and his people.
“I do. But I can’t focus on fixing that hole in space and time while looking over my shoulder for the next sucker punch. Quantum and I will do it on our own.”
“It’ll take more than an hour to salvage enough to turn a profit. Make it three.”
The Warden gave a bitter laugh. “I don’t even know if we have the one hour before that interdimensional hole swallows us. But I’ll give you one, that’s it.”
Rook’s grin returned. “Suit yourself. Just remember you’ve got a crackpot with a shotgun running loose on this station as well as all them ghosts your blue boy says don’t exist.”
“Don’t worry about us. Just get your stuff and go.” The Warden headed back in the direction of sickbay.
Rook cursed unde
r his breath, then called after him. “All right. Have it your way, Warden. We’ll play nice and help you fix that breach if we can. But if I’m going to take that kind of risk, I want full salvage when this is done.”
The Warden stopped and frowned. “Only if it’s legal. But if I catch you or any member of your crew trying to kill Carter or any other survivors, I won’t hesitate to put you down.”
A quartet of screaming ghosts shambled out of the lounge’s far wall. They lumbered across the room before sinking through the floor. Their shrieks continued to echo throughout the station.
“First things first,” the Warden said. “We’ll need to find a way to defend ourselves against those.”
---
“You said something about the food processors in the cafeteria,” Rook said to Ramirez as he and the Warden returned to sickbay. “Something about them running on direct current.”
“Yes. Most stuff nowadays uses alternating current. Safer and more efficient, but that model of food printer uses DC and works faster.”
The Warden’s alien spoke up. “When the device exploded, it expelled an arc of direct current, which somehow… disrupted the time shadows. It is possible that the constant stream of electrons breaks the phasal anomaly’s connection with this plane in the time-space continuum. At least temporarily.”
The Warden nodded. “That’ll have to be good enough. So, how do we arm ourselves with some direct current?”
Brock, more cognizant with a bandaged forehead, said, “My welder uses direct current. Doesn’t have the range of even a hold-out pistol, but it could do in a pinch.”
Rook snapped his fingers and turned to Strega. “That supply closet we checked upstairs. It was a repair and maintenance storeroom. If there’s gonna be any industrial-strength welders on this hulk, they’ll be there.”
“Some welders use alternating current,” Ramirez pointed out.
“I can alter them to produce direct current,” the Mechtechan said.
“Right.” The Warden turned for the door. “Then I’ll take Rook and Strega to fetch the welders. Quantum, I want you and the ladies to work out a way to shut down that interdimensional hole that’s trying to eat us.”
The alien’s antennae twirled, and he seemed to smile. “Certainly, if you insist on giving me the easy job.”
Rook and Strega followed the Warden into the central corridor. They hadn’t gone a dozen steps to the right, heading up, when what sounded like a hundred howls filled the hall behind them.
Rook turned to see a host of apparitions erupting from the walls, ceiling and floor. Though vaguely human in shape, the spectral figures were elongated, twisted, and malformed. Shrieking faces melted and distended over warped skulls as spidery fingers and hands stretched out toward him.
For a moment, Rook thought he saw the disfigured shades of Hicks and Chan in that roiling ectoplasmic mass.
He froze.
“Run!” The Warden grabbed his shoulder, roughly pushed him forward.
He ran.
The horde of ghosts followed, slithering, boiling, crawling, and scurrying along every surface of the spiraling corridor, the hellish volume of their insane suffering rising above the blood pounding in Rook’s ears, the breath tearing at his throat, the heartbeat drumming in his chest with each frantic step.
“They’re not stopping!” Rook gasped.
The Warden turned to Strega. “What’s that vibro-ax run on?”
The big saurian shrugged. “Power?”
“Worth a shot.” The Warden snatched the hefty weapon off Strega’s back, turned, and hurled it into the closing horror. As the vibro-ax tumbled into the first wave, the Warden drew one of his blasters and fired. The shot caught the power supply in the haft, and the weapon exploded in a blinding arc of white electricity.
The ghosts vanished.
Rook looked at the Warden. A single bead of sweat on the man’s nose was the only evidence of the harrowing chase. The Warden shrugged and holstered his weapon. “I had a fifty-fifty chance and took it. Now, let’s get those welders.”
“Yes. Let’s.”
---
“Any luck figuring out how to stop this thing?” the Warden asked as he, Rook, and Strega set three heavy welders on an empty bed in the med bay.
Another pulse shook the station, killing the lights and gravity. Ghastly moans sounded outside the sealed doors.
Quantum turned from the computer as the lights and artificial-G came back online. “As a matter of fact, yes. I have a plan that may work. By running high-capacity conduits from the power plant directly into the rift, we may be able to channel all the station’s energy into enough direct current to disrupt the opened channel. If I am right, this disruption may give someone enough time to reach the gate’s controls and shut it down manually.”
Rook scoffed. “If you’re right. That’s one hell of a big if.”
Quantum looked at the salvage captain. “If I am wrong, we will all die unless we leave this station and system immediately.”
The Warden trusted his friend’s judgment, especially when it came to matters of science and technology. More than enough to bet his life on it.
But Rook grunted, looked to Ramirez and Brock. “What do you guys think?”
Brock shrugged. “Sounds as good as any solution to me. But my vote is to loot and scoot. This is some serious cosmic mojo we’re slagging with, Rook.”
The Warden watched Ramirez. She raised her chin and looked Rook in the eye. “We came to plunder this place, but we might just be able to save it. And by doing so, we might get Hicks and Chan back. I think that’s worth the risk.”
The Warden nodded. “Well said. Let’s get to work.”
Rook shook his head, but said nothing.
Ten minutes later, Quantum monitored the situation from the med bay while the Warden led the others back to the supply closets to retrieve several hundred meters of high-voltage cable. They had converted the industrial welders to direct current, and Quantum had connected the medical terminal to all the station’s higher functions.
The welders, designed for repairing the hulls of spacecraft, were bulky affairs that necessitated the use of both hands and a heavy charging pack. While not typically a major issue in the low gravity of space, this required one person to carry the welder and another to carry the pack while in the station’s artificial gravity. Brock and Ramirez carried the welders, and Rook and the Warden wore their packs, respectively. Only Strega was strong enough to simultaneously do both.
The plan entailed retrieving the cables, then making straight for the central power plant where Brock would hook them into the primary generator. She would then change the output settings to direct current. From there, they would make their way to the lowest level and deposit the other ends of the cables into the maw of the rift. When all was ready, Quantum would engage the generator from his station at the computer.
That was the plan. But the Warden knew that no plan survives first contact with the enemy intact.
“I’m curious,” he said to Ramirez as they led the way to the engine room. He and Rook now carried a heavy spool of cable in each hand, as well as the power packs on their backs. The welder teams were spaced several meters apart to keep from being completely wiped out by a sudden rush of ghosts from the walls or ceiling. “How did you wind up with this outfit?”
Ramirez smiled sidelong at him. She now wore dark goggles to protect against the welder’s glare. “You mean, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’ Isn’t that a pickup line from your generation?”
The Warden laughed for what felt like the first time in forever. “Actually, that one was pretty old before I was born, I do believe. But yes, essentially, that’s what I’m asking.”
A wailing head poked out of the floor in front of them. Ramirez blasted it with a white rope of direct current. A smoking scorch mark on the melted rubberized floor remained.
They continued down the corridor.
“So, we’re
sharing our life stories now?” Her smile returned with a sigh. “I’ve made a lot of bad decisions, Warden, and I don’t think right now is the best time to catalog them for somebody whose name I don’t even know.”
The Warden glanced over his shoulder, saw that Rook and Brock were well out of earshot. “My name is—”
A gunshot drowned out his whispered words.
The wind rushed from his lungs as his knees gave out. The impact knocked him sideways into the wall.
It took the Warden a moment to realize he’d been shot.
In that moment Ramirez raised the welder and sent an arc of electricity down the hallway. By its blue-white glow, the Warden saw the shaggy head of Carter duck around the next bend.
“No!” the Warden shouted, regaining his breath as he tried to stand. “Don’t kill him!”
“What the hell’s going on?” Rook demanded as he and Brock hurried to his side. “That was no ghost.”
“It was Carter.” Ramirez scowled at the engineer. “With Brock’s shotgun.”
“Did you get him?” Rook asked, hope evident in his tone.
The Warden finally managed to regain his feet. He checked his bleeding side. The shock was wearing off, fiery pins and needles rapidly replacing the numb sensation. “No, she didn’t. The man’s out of his mind, not responsible for his actions.”
Ramirez stared at him. “He just shot you!”
The Warden shook his head. “My suit took most of the trauma. Just a flesh wound. Glad it was buckshot and not an AP slug… Come on, we’ve got a job to do and we can’t be bunched up like this.”
“Right,” Rook said. “Hate for that psycho to get more than one of us with that scattergun. But you stand on your moral high ground, Warden. And just maybe the next blast won’t catch you in that pretty face of yours.”
The lights flickered, went out with the gravity. Moans and shrieks sounded from all sides. The lights did not come back on. The howls grew louder, closer.
The Last Star Warden - Tales of Adventure and Mystery from Frontier Space - Volume 1 Page 7