“The entire Proxibee system is mainly run by humans, with the occasional visiting alien in some of the embassies. It’s the only star system like it. Even Alpha Centauri is multicultural. As this is a predominantly private part of space, apart from the Secret Services outposts, even the local space force is mostly made up of humans. It’s why I like astralling. Hanging around too many humans in one place gets boring after a while. Sometimes I think, at least they could have brought some animals with them.”
Heartness grinned. “Well, we’re not all bad. And I guess that explains all the humanoid robots in this part of space.”
"Yes, robots and A.I.s make up for the lack of differences.” Then Szuki slapped her forehead. “I almost forgot!” She went back out of the corridor of parts and pointed to its edges. "Something I just discovered when you arrived. This mass of human parts might look like a corridor, but it’s not. The hexicle is bigger than this."
"What?" asked Heartness, peering closely. “No corners. It was more like a tube than a corridor.”
Szuki displayed her wristband image. A map of the base. Sixty hexagonal modules joined together, circling out from the elevator onto the surface in a greater hexagon shape.
"When I first saw the fleshtube I simply assumed it had taken over hexicle 3. But the hexicles are all the same size. So, this thing couldn't be the only thing in 3."
Szuki zoomed down into hexicle 3 on her band, and Heartness knew she was accessing the shuttle's organic network to peer through the plasticrete structure, using different wavelengths. The band’s display flickered as it scanned through X-ray, infrared and others, and assembled an image of what it detected to be inside the hexicle. The image changed to grays and splashes of color like an ultrasound view, before becoming more defined.
The fleshtube took up two thirds of the room. There was still a third left. Heartness could see the tops of tables and chairs, a serving bench, a storage cupboard, even what looked to be a now dead plant in a pot. It had been an eating area. Perhaps the people had been sorted while eating their lunch.
The scan also showed there was a figure still there. The software tried to make sense of the image, and eventually they could see from above the thick black hair of a human male sitting at a table, with a drink in his hand, looking towards the fleshtube.
Frozen in time.
"It must have been quick," said Heartness. “If he’s there, there could be others, frozen in time, too.”
Szuki shifted the map around to see how they could enter the hexicle from the other side. "The boffs never went from the other side. I sent them out through door 6 into that part of the base. This side really hasn’t been explored that much.” She tapped quickly, and a line appeared across the map. “It looks like the quickest route is via hexicles 4 and 13. We can get to 4 via the elevator. Ready for a walk?"
Heartness nodded, glad to be out of the fleshtube, and they headed for the elevator room again.
And found, much to their dismay, that the elevator door for hexicle 4 was stuck.
Chapter 13
The slowly turning black triangle blotted out several stars as Patel and Watanabe shot from Space Station X-1a in their force shields, and towards one of the airlocks of the triangular Stellar Flash.
“Where’d those stanchions come from?” asked Watanabe on the travel mic.
Patel looked closely. On top of the Stellar Flash, equally placed around the white hemisphere that covered the Center, were three inwardly curved metal guides. Patel guessed that these guides would make the flash jump system more efficient, but he was positive that he hadn’t requested any. “Part of the upgrade?”
“It’s good we don’t need to store her in a hangar. We’d have to reconfigure the ceilings.”
Patel was about to nod, then remembered his nanite suit. “Yes. You’re right. Let’s see if we can spot any other updates.”
“Actually, I think the font has changed.”
As they pulsed closer to the triangle, other changes became apparent. The words on the deck near the hemisphere were definitely a bit more stylish. It looked like there was some gradient to the yellowish steel too.
And an I.C. had been added.
“I really don’t know why we need to paint names on these things. I never painted a name on my flying car.”
Watanabe grinned. “Maybe we could just rename it Flashy McFlashface.”
“I don’t know why I brought you along.”
Watanabe laughed.
The electromagnetic pulses in their boots stopped and new pulses began along their arms. “Stay straight until we’re close enough to touch. The suit will know what to do.”
“I know,” said Watanabe. “I designed them!”
“Did you really? I had no idea! Good work!”
“I’m not just a pretty face.”
Patel hmphed. “Well, the jury is still out on that one.”
The E.M. pulses along their arms slowed them enough until they were almost motionless, slowly coasting towards airlock 2. The corridor through the blurred airlock glass looked deserted.
“Perhaps we should have entered via a hanger?” said Watanabe, suddenly concerned.
“On a ship, with edges a kilometer long, with random rooms full of rocks? We’d never know which one would be the best to enter. At least with a corner airlock we’ve got a higher probability of egress.”
Moments later, they were connecting with the outer hull of the Stellar Flash. Watanabe struggled for a moment, grappling to find a foothold before settling down. Patel calmly reached out and grabbed a rung that was next to the entrance. “You’re settled?” Patel showed some concern for his old friend, but Watanabe held up a suited hand.
“All good. Just, give me a second to get my breath.”
“Second’s over.”
Watanabe coughed. “Gee, thanks. You’re all heart.”
“Well, I hope not. Activating synchronized phase-shift.”
Their suits immediately shimmered, shaking them into a vibration which would slide them easily between the atoms of the flash ship’s time crystal surface.
Patel moved first, putting his right foot through the airlock door and proceeding to shift the rest of his body through. Then he stopped. “Can you feel that?” A slight vibration had started coming from the door. “I think we need to be quick.”
But it was too late. Before Watanabe could do the same, there was a bright flash, and both were thrown back into space the way they had come, their suits flickering wildly.
Chapter 14
Hogart and several aliens were madly slapping the contents of room 347 with mini flash tags, while Kumar was quickly opening more rooms along the route the new corridor would appear. In just a few minutes, the ship’s next update would erase several rooms in a line, and whatever was in them would be lost forever.
“A.I.” yelled Hogart. “Is the internal flash system online yet?”
“One moment please.”
“A.I. Hurry.”
“Stand by.”
Kumar pointed at one of the walls. It had begun to shift.
“Internal flash systems online,” said the A.I.
“And Hangar 27 has had its stones removed?”
“Confirmed.”
“All tagged devices to Hanger 27 now!”
Hogart clenched his teeth and closed his eyes tight as the room quickly filled with isolation fields, taking every piece of equipment to a safer location on the ship.
He opened his eyes to find no one was there.
“Um, Jonathan,” said Kumar’s voice. “It’s not just the equipment that needs to be out of there.”
“Oh! Right!” Hogart immediately ran through the door, just as the other wall began screeching and closing in the room, and the internal areas of the ship began shifting around.
Hogart bent over in the outside corridor, his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. “That was close!” He straightened quickly as Kumar rejoined him. Together they watched as walls shifted around to
form the new corridors. Doors dissolved like water, the ceiling clattered around like a thrown deck of playing cards, and the floor became fluid for a moment before solidifying again. The walls turned and shifted like playing pieces, moving into new spaces on the board, while walls that were no longer needed concertinaed and faded into the structure. “It’s like something from that hundred-year-old fiction stream. What was it called? Doctor Strange?”
“Doctor who?”
Within moments everything had stopped moving, and Hogart could see both ways along the corridors to other ends of the ship. “Were you able to open all the rooms in time? Did you find anything else?”
“Mostly alien quarters that had been abandoned for millions of years, and full of rocks. But I checked the system. Not all the rooms have been lost. Just the ones that were where the new corridors had to be. And a few new rooms with new functions have been created, too.”
“So, what has happened to what was in the rooms? Is everything lost forever, or is there some way to retrieve anything? Just in case you missed something!”
“Well, Jonathan, I did find out something that you might not be aware of.”
“What’s that?”
“Digital storage. I turned it on just before the upgrade took place. There is now a light-field representation of everything that was erased. If we do find we have missed something, we can explore the hologram and see what it was. Print it out again.”
“Brilliant. Anything else I should know?”
Kumar looked at him, almost coyly. “What is the main reason I’m here?”
“To get Josie Tonderai’s room open, where my clone had left some kind of gift for Doctor John Patel.”
“Exactly!”
“And were you able to do that in time?”
Kumar grinned. “Oh, I opened that ages ago!”
Chapter 15
With micro time particles, and whatever was on the base that had caused that conglomeration of human parts, Heartness was reluctant to use her flash band, in case she ended up as part of it.
But, the quickest direct route would take them half an hour to navigate. She wanted this over with as soon as possible so that she could go back and warn the Stellar Flash. Sadly, it looked like she would be here for hours yet. She just had to hope that Hogart and Raj, and Patel and Watanabe, were smart enough to work out the problem.
While the elevator had six exit doors, all the hexicles had only one or two, making navigating a lot harder. The base was more of a warren than a hive.
"Perhaps if we go via hexicle 5, into 4, then take the lift to the bridge from there and cross over to 13…," said Szuki staring at her band. “2 doesn’t have a door to 11.”
Heartness had had her lobe software scan the map and it had arrived at the same conclusion. "A.I. says your suggestion is best, and that it would take just fifteen minutes."
Szuki was about to put her hand on the opener for door 5, when a rumbling began under their feet. Her hair took on a whiter shade. “This area was chosen due to the distinct lack of b-quakes.”
Heartness looked at her in alarm. “Proxibee has quakes? Directly underneath a massive orbital elevator?”
The rumbling subsided and Szuki let out a breath. “It could be micro time particles passing through the crust and creating or filling voids as time shifts around them. Either way, now we have another threat to worry about.” Then her hair changed back to a more sunny and golden color. “Still, it’s the least of our worries.” She activated door 5 and the doors opened with a grinding sound to reveal an almost empty white hexagonal room. The lights flickered on and they could see it was littered with a few overturned multicolored chairs.
A waiting or meeting area.
Heartness looked pointedly at Szuki as the grinding stopped. “I thought the elevator couldn’t be affected?”
"That doesn't sound right. The elevator has its own hydrogen wind power generation system, independent of the base. It should continuously repair.”
"Perhaps these micro time particles age metal, too.”
"Or perhaps they age the organic material we use to keep them moving. Are we about to walk into an aging time area?" Szuki pressed a button on her wrist band and sent a signal to her ship. Her band beeped with the result. "I wish I could bring the cyborg control system here, but it’s too bulky, and it would stop our little shuttle from working. So, I’ve patched a feed into my flashsleeve interpreting the locations of any temporal disturbances in the base. It’s a bit basic." She showed Heartness the display on her wrist.
"Can we link it to the walls?" Heartness indicated a blank wall on the left. “That looks like it’s got viewfilm.”
"On it!" Szuki scanned for the signal and connected. A blue, red and green map with black outlines and yellow flashes appeared on the wall.
Heartness knew the yellow flashes were not good signs.
"The ship is now patched directly into the base systems.” Szuki smiled at her success.
"Perfect.” Heartness was not so excited, and had a feeling she was walking through a death trap. She moved to the center of hexicle 5 and saw a black dot appear on the viewfilm, matching her speed. With some relief she was able to confirm she was nowhere near any of the yellow flashes.
Szuki followed, and a second black dot appeared on the wall.
"Scanning only movement?" asked Heartness.
"Yes. It's a simple system. If there are any others here frozen in time, we won't know it until we see them."
The entrance on the left to hexicle 4 was already open, so they quickly strode through into the next one. This one was similar to the last, except for a cube shaped lift where a door could have been, and an entrance to 15 on their right.
“That will take us up to a small viewing bridge.” Szuki pointed at the lift. “It had been quite useful when we had had large groups of people taking the Clarke. Their baggage and stocks were sent on a conveyor from the elevator to this lift and brought down. Now, it’s just a viewing area. A place where the scientists can look out and enjoy the view of Proxibee.”
Heartness waved her hand across the lift control. A quiet grinding sound, then the lift doors began to open, then stopped. Heartness made to pull on one of the doors, but it wouldn’t budge.
Particle, quake or something else? Either way, they were stuck. "Are there stairs to this bridge?"
Szuki shook her head. "’fraid not. We could choose another hexicle and make our way to the next section. 15, 14, 29, 28, then 12? But we don’t know how many other doors might be stuck. It could take longer."
Heartness stared at the stuck doors. Maybe they could do something once they were inside. They needed something to prize the doors open with. She looked about the hexicle for inspiration. There was what looked like a storage area in one corner. Lots of food and drink. She picked a package up and it turned to dust, spilling into a pile near the collection. "I guess there has been some time-aging here, too."
"That's not all," said Szuki, pointing behind a desk near one of the corners. On the ground was a pile of dust, rubber, plastic, and circuit boards.
"A boff," said Heartness. "They're mostly biodegradable so, maybe a hundred years?"
Szuki nodded and lifted up one of the chairs, pointing at the plastic leg. "Maybe we could use this?"
Heartness grabbed another chair and, using the legs, together they leveraged the doors open.
Inside was a standard rectangular lift with a low ceiling. The shaft hatch in the lift ceiling was open.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Szuki.
Heartness nodded. “I’ll go first.” She put her chair down, stood on it, and was able to pull herself up through the ceiling and onto the roof of the lift.
Szuki quickly followed.
Inset into the wall in front were a few rungs that would allow them to climb up to the bridge, but the upper doors were still closed.
Heartness immediately lay on her stomach on the roof of the lift, reached down through the opening,
grabbed the chair they had climbed on, and pulled it up.
"You're pretty spry for an admiral," said Szuki.
"I work out," said Heartness, hefting the chair leg up and attempting to push it between the two upper doors.
"Or, we could just use this!" said Szuki. She pointed at the door-winder mechanism in the left wall.
Heartness rolled her eyes. "Though, perhaps, I'll be needing better lenses soon!"
Szuki grinned, turned the winder, and the bridge doors began edging their way open.
Then suddenly exploded into the wall behind them, the metal buckling the lift shaft and shaking the whole cube.
Both Heartness and Szuki dived to the bridge side of the top of the lift as bits of metal and plastic fell about them.
Then the double doors, rebounding from their crash, momentum lost, toppled slowly towards them.
Episode 3
Space Force
Chapter 16
A huge, hairy, green alien, with twelve pole-like legs, and quite a number of eyes on its circular head, clacked into Space Station X-1a’s newly built bar in Ring Three. It twisted its long thorax, big enough to cover a table for twenty humans, and hunkered down at the wide space near the end of one.
A blue humanoid girl with six arms went over to the spider-like alien. “Well, hello, handsome.” She blinked as the creature dropped out a long tongue, and then, breathing heavily, reached over to stroke it. “I think I could offer you a discount.” She moved her hands to his hairy mandibles. “Perhaps, even free?”
The alien shifted its bulk and its translator rasped a reply. “Sorry female. I’m flattered, and thanks for the offer, but there’s only one girl for me, back on Arachnos. I wish you good hunting!”
The blue girl bowed, and went to another table to speak to a creature with multiple tentacles.
The alien clacked his legs in amusement, then lifted one up to attract the drink maker.
“Puppy!” yelled the drink-maker in recognition, a reddish humanoid alien with four arms and horns on its head. “It is so good to see you again. Thanks for booking in advance. It gave me the time to get ready for you, and move the tables around. The last I heard, you were in the Andromeda Galaxy!”
Temporal Incursion Page 6
