The captain untangled his feet from the bags where he had ended up while avoiding the kids. Seeing Delray’s long face through an open door he said, “Delray, those kids of yours are gonna be the death of me yet. Get control of them, won’t ya!”
Delray, in turn, whirled around on his wife. “Betty, I told you to keep those kids out of the way. They’re out here causing all kinds of ruckus.”
Betty was just a faint echo in the captain’s ears. “Don’t you pawn those kids off on me, Delray, they’re your kids too, ya know. Show some responsibility.”
Paul almost grinned to himself thinking it was just retribution for their kids running him over. He would be very happy indeed to get off the shuttle and start all over.
He paused to scan his eyes and the door to the outside pre/post-decontamination room slid open silently. It was blissfully quiet after the door slid shut behind him, and he strode over to the window looking into the decontamination chamber.
Yakobe and Rakhabi stood a few steps back from the great gate barring access to the real shift-gate that spanned the many kilometers to the Kipero gate. A mere two guards stood at the entrance holding their crystal topped spears in front of them. They were jostled from behind as they waited but did not comment on the rudeness of those pressing in on them since neither of them had been to either this gate or any other. They were trying to blend in as best they could. Back home, the lines would have been orderly, the people patient. Here, people pressed in on all sides fitting themselves through the press to get even closer to the gate. They silently linked arms holding their bundles in front of them so they would not lose them, and waited yet some more.
The gate itself was massive, intricately carved, and detailed with landscape and historical markers from the Kipero side. Anyone who had ever been to the Kipero valley would recognize the sculptures and carvings for what they were. Across the top of the gate stretched a view of the bridge between worlds and the dome of the keep containing the gate was textured with details of their sister planet. The keep itself was the only solitary structure on the hill just outside of Tigreye where they had spent the night.
There was a loud clang and the gate began to slowly creep open. It would not close again until nightfall. The guards stood to the sides of the gate with their spears leaning inward towards each other. Yakobe and Rakhabi were shuffled along in the crowd through the gates and under the powerful crystal-tipped spears held by the guards that were mirror images of each other except for the color of their eyes and the crystals embedded in their foreheads outlined by their conical helmets that were probably metallic, but which were polished so that they reflected as well as any mirror.
They were pushed along with the crowd until they reached the center of the Keep, bounded on all sides by the rooms built directly into the walls of the Keep itself. They entered the center arena, stepping easily over the crystalline knee wall bounding the entire arena. The ten pillars reaching up to the domed roof they had seen from the outside was formed of the same substance and pulsed with the energy channeling from the roof and the ground into the gateway.
The guards barred the first gate after 50 people had passed through. A curtain of faint light was all that could be seen of the impenetrable barrier through which no one could pass. They were herded by the Keep’s attendants into the center arena and warned to remain entirely within the bounds set by the knee wall or they would arrive on the other side missing whatever appendage or item had been left outside. They squirmed their way to the center of the arena looking somewhat fearful of losing a limb.
The crowd was as mixed a batch as those that had crossed the river with them the day before. Yakobe even thought he recognized the farmer with the chickens cooped in the wicker cage.
The columns pulsed even brighter as they watched and the keep outside of the knee wall faded from view. It was like standing in a slightly frosted glass bubble, even the domed ceiling faded from view. There was no sensation of movement unless you watched the side of the containment too closely. The scenery outside the bubble seemed to stretch and warp, never fully gaining focus, always a glimpse of what might be, but not of what was; a distortion of what is.
The entire process took less than a quarter mark, during which they strolled around the arena watching the blur of colors and almost shapes passing by. One of the attendants stopped them so they could pay for their passage and to enter their names in the traveler log inscribing alongside that the reasons for their travels.
They wondered why she had even asked for the purpose of their travels when she interrupted them not even halfway through their explanation and strode off to speak to a different customer; a tall serious looking fellow wearing a long overcoat.
They knew they had arrived when the patterns in the floor abruptly changed, and the swirl of color eddied away to a dim view of the inside of the Kipero gate Keep. Their ears popped as the translucent force field around them opened like a flower and receded into the knee wall. Instead of a domed roof above their heads, there was a vaulted ceiling. It was just as high as the dome but rose up squarely on both sides to a peak running the length of the building.
They were immediately shuffled out of the arena and directed into an area lined with booths. The smell of grilled venison and fowl tickled their nostrils and the noise of bartering and conversation filled the air. A child darted across their path followed by a mother scolding him to stop where he was that very instant. Guards were strategically placed throughout the booths and were as silent as the large pillars holding up the roof.
Yakobe and Rakhabi had already eaten breakfast and were not waylaid by the food and merchandise surrounding them. Instead, they strode out the gate at the end of the long hall ready to walk all the way to Kipero. The twin planet hung high in the north, filling a full third of the sky and covering the northern horizon. They stared at it with wide eyes. They had been taught the lore about their sister, but this was the first time either had seen it dominate the sky so completely.
“Can you imagine living in the sister’s shadow your whole life?” Rakhabi thought.
“No,” Yakobe replied. “It’s so dominating this close, don’t you think?”
“Yes. That’s almost the understatement of the turn. Do you think that black streak is the bridge? It looks so small and thin.”
“They say you can actually tesser to it without a focal aid if you’re skilled enough.” Yakobe mulled that over in his mind before he continued. “I may not be the best, but I should like to try it sometime. You could help anchor me in case I couldn’t find it and needed to get back.” They both knew that tessering somewhere like that where they had never been and where a slip would mean a plunge to their death was extremely dangerous. Unless, of course, you had someone acting as an anchor with one foot on solid ground, as it were, to yank you back if you missed your landing.
“Well, now’s not the time even if I do let you try it. Let’s get settled and start on what we came here to do before we get sidetracked by your curiosity.” Rakhabi smiled at Yakobe, taking the sting out of her words as they strode on down the brick-paved highway.
They kept within sight of the guards that were marching back to the barracks at Kipero, probably the night shift. With the security they felt tagging along so close to the squad, they were quite relaxed and took in the scenery as they walked. There was so much to look at that was new to them. The more they experienced, the smaller their little world back home seemed.
CHAPTER FOUR:
Disaster
Robert Zordel looked sideways at his copilot Dana Jones. “Did you see that, Dana? What was that?”
“Yea, that was odd. Leon, run some extra scans in front of us. There’s something weird out there, something not quite right.” The instruments flickered as she spoke and a horizontal line fuzzed out across every display on the bridge.
“My display’s very erratic right now. The information I can make out on the display is conflicting with itself. First, it senses multiple unknown
rock forms like there’s an asteroid belt out there, then nothing.”
“Leon, record everything,” the commander snapped. “This may be a result of these two planets being so close together. If we can get a good recording and go over the data later, we may figure out what’s going on here and what’s keeping these twins apart – or together, depending on how you look at it. Dana, I want your eyes out the forward windows while our equipment is malfunctioning.”
“Aye, aye, Commander,” echoed around the bridge and the tension level climbed as first one display then another flickered and went out only to come straight back on as if it had never been off.
“I still don’t see anything out the window,” Dana chimed glancing back at Commander Savage. She was out of her seat standing immediately in front of the window to get the best view possible.
“There is one consistency in all this,” Leon said. “In all the information vacillation saying there’s nothing, then something, the distance to the something, that’s nothing, is decreasing at the same rate as our last known velocity.”
“What’s the distance and time to it given our current velocity?” Robert asked.
“The best I can estimate is that it’s less than two ticks away, but anything of that mass should be visible out the window.”
“I still have nothing, Commander,” Dana chimed again.
“Robert, prepare to disengage the autopilot. Dorothy call sickbay and tell Issur – no get him on the horn, NOW!”
Dana jumped. Not at the commander’s words or tone, but at what she realized she was not seeing out the window. “Captain! The stars are gone. It’s not what we can see; it’s what we can’t see! There’s something blocking the light from the stars, and it’s growing.” Her voice rose in volume and pitch as she spoke and the blocked area grew in size and definition. It was a strip of black across the star-studded backdrop that was blacker than a dark cave that never saw the light.
“Robert, disengage the autopilot and adjust course immediately. Just ignore the instruments. Avoid that stretch of space that we can’t see at all costs!” The commander’s voice thundered out and practically shook the bridge with its intensity.
“I’m trying Commander, but the controls are not responding.” Robert first jammed one button then whirled his control stick before mashing yet more buttons and trying again.
The ship began to shake and wobble as it first accepted his input then rejected it as though he’d never given it. The thrusters sparked first from the aft then from the bow before firing from both sides of the bow simultaneously.
Robert looked sick as he realized that the control of the ship was totally out of his hands. Except in the case of catastrophic control failure and cross-talk between ship control components, nothing the ship was now doing was possible.
“Focus on only one direction, Robert, and full reverse thrusters.” The commander was all but swearing under his breath as his knuckles whitened from gripping the console in front of himself. He was going to tell Dorothy to throw on the restraint warning and the emergency klaxon, but they were already intermittently flashing and blaring. The flicker of the lights had almost reached the level the MP’s used with crowd control strobes. He felt sick to his stomach.
Dana staggered back from the window trying to stay afoot and barely succeeding. It was not until she went totally silent from her screaming that they all looked out the window to see the black take form. The black band that stretched across their view filling it was defined not by areas of light and reflection, but by darkness and even darker void.
“There’s no answer from sickbay, Bill,” Dorothy said before she leaned off the side of her seat and threw up in the middle of the floor. As the lights pulsed and the void outside the window drew closer, that activity was repeated throughout the bridge as the crew fought to get the ship under control.
Eerie quiet pervaded the chaos. Time Slowed. The void drew them in. The entire crew on the COMET’s bridge froze in place, their eyes glued on the encompassing void.
Jacinto stared in horror as the alien craft approached the bridge. “What can they be thinking?” she projected. Her own horror was reflected in the Mwene’s eyes and around the circle of those following its path. The guards slammed their spears down on the floor and all attention was drawn and focused on the Mwene. Away he cast his thoughts drawing on the strength of those around him until he encountered the alien craft. Fear! Terror! Surprise! Failure! These all beat at him reflected from those on the alien craft. Matching the feelings he felt from them, he returned in like kind. “Danger! Beware! Return! NO!”
The commander flinched. “MAYDAY—MAYDAY!” Dorothy screamed into the mic, “Impact with an unknown mass is imminent. Avoid traveling between the planets at all costs. We have total loss of control and massive interference from an unknown source.” Dorothy passed out and hung like a rag doll from her restraints.
Leon stared in shock at the energy spikes that burst out across the now dead console.
Dana screamed and Robert’s yell, “NO!” was an echo of the “NO” that was now imprinted on the minds of every soul on board the COMET.
Issur flinched and sat up straight in the darkness. “NO” echoed in his mind and in the lips of every person in the sickbay.
The ship flew into the void and shattered. The blossoming explosion from the central drive blew the ship in half before consuming the entire front half of the ship. The void coalesced and took the shape of the underlying rock that had been there all along. Ripples of energy ran its length absorbing the explosion that appeared to snuff out as quickly as it had expanded, absorbed totally by the void.
On impact, the quarantine hatches in the sickbay engaged as quick as thought. It was the only section of the ship still intact. Blown at a right angle to the direction it had been traveling, it hurtled down into the atmosphere of Magellan’s sister. Parallel to its course, the energy of the explosion rippled down the length of the void.
The guard standing at the entrance to the tunnel never knew what hit him. One minute he was there, the next he was vapor. The Mwene’s advisor screamed as the remains of the craft hurdled end over end past her sight. Her feet melted into the rock on the edge where she stood, her clothing combusted and the skin on her back melted. Baryesu did not see her crumple. He had already been ejected over the edge like a boulder from a catapult. He was caught in a maelstrom of energy rippling from the tunnel out to the remains of the ship that was hurtling ground-ward. His clothes disintegrated, and his skin turned black like burnt creosote. The energy pulsed around him and drew into every follicle of his crystal hair. It coursed through his crystalline bone structure until it shone through his black flaky skin. He should have been dead already, but there was the shadow of a life force within the energy encapsulating him that intertwined with his own and held it fast. The shadow could not use his body if it was dead, but in his weakened state, he could not keep his own identity separate. All thought burned from his mind. The flash of pain he had felt for a brief moment crescendoed before his nerve endings were laid bare and dissolved. It was as though he were a baby contained in a womb of power, protected from the maelstrom that swirled around him. He fed off the umbilical of power that flowed from the shadowy life force funneled through the bridge.
The edges of that energy lapped at Nenele and at the child developing in her womb. If it could have cried out it would have. Its life of peace and tranquility had been interrupted, replaced by the weight of generations of malevolence and the desire to consume and warp the beauty of created life. Its life, like that of Baryesu, would only be a shadow of what life was intended to be.
Sensing the battered life forms in the sickbay hurtling away towards the planet, the shadow stretched along with its umbilical of power and attempted to overtake them and consume them as well. But the ship had been a part of the initial explosion and had its own inertia and induced energy from its trajectory alongside the bridge. The ship’s energy repelled that of the shadow.
&nb
sp; The sickbay continued to hurtle towards the ground and the tendrils of the shadow’s power retreated back to the bridge drawing with it the wasted body and mind of Baryesu. It continued to lap at Nenele and her child sustaining her with a trickle of its own life force.
When the explosion rippled across the scope, the Mwene withdrew the mental warning and shielded them from the backlash of energy. Still linked as they were, their senses were heightened and their experience shared; though guided by the Mwene.
They stared in horror as the craft exploded. Disbelief flickered across their consciousness as they followed the energy wave and intact portion of the craft past the entrance to the bridge. There was someone up there. Suddenly a string of loud explosions resounded. They were so strong that they almost knocked them to the ground. From the bridge, a rumbling roar extended out and pulsed at them, pounding them beat by beat into the ground. It was like the tunnel between worlds was crying out in pain, echoing that pain from world to world and back again. It continued unabated. The Mwene sent out a mental shout following the path of their recent tesser from the castle.
The response was immediate. Along with acknowledgment of his shout, the gateway flickered open once again and the Mwene’s guards streamed through. They fanned out and surrounded the observatory where the hastily erected shield fluctuated ethereally around the entire structure. Once the guards had spaced themselves out, every other one of them linked up with the Mwene.
The Mwene expanded the shield to encompass them all and sent a thin probing tendril of energy towards the craft that was now hurtling directly towards them. Once that tendril located the craft, he expanded his perceptions and confirmed that there was still life aboard. What he did next out of sheer impulse, he would marvel at for the rest of his days. There was a foreign life in jeopardy. Here, they were peace-loving creatures and strove to preserve life. He drew energy from those around him and through them he drew energy from deep within the planet itself. Slowly he began to stabilize the craft. He kept it from flipping end over end and then began to slow its descent. His mind went back to his childhood as he remembered the first time he had caught a physical object with telekinesis. There was a game they played, Powerball, where they would create a ball of energy and cast it from one player to another. They were to catch it without using their hands and pass it on to their teammates. If the “ball” was in their possession, they could not move. If a player retained possession of the ball for longer than the count of five, the nearest opponent could mentally wrest it from him. Never was anyone to physically touch it. No one would want to anyways because the burns from doing so would be incredible.
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