Backflow Boxed Set

by F P Adriani

  “But,” I started to say to Thura, but then she was gone an instant later.

  Gary and I grabbed onto each other now. I was shaking, and he held me hard, his hands shaking too, over my back….

  The space around us began lightening, and my nausea began subsiding. I pulled back from Gary’s arms. “Something’s changing.”

  “Yeah,” Gary said, as forms around us grew clearer—angles and lines first, then walls…

  To my surprise, we wound up materializing in the Monument’s kitchen.

  Geena had been working inside there; she held a bowl in her hand, and as soon as she saw us, she dropped the bowl and shouted, “Captain—Gary! What happened to you?”

  Someone else rushed into the room and up to me and Gary and hugged us—Babs. I felt my heart sink against her….

  When she pulled back, she asked the same thing Thura had: “Where is Kostas?”

  I didn’t know what to say; neither did Gary. We just looked into Babs’ dark eyes, and she knew us quite well…I watched tears finally fill her eyes.

  She turned away and grabbed onto the edge of one of the counters.

  “I’m—I’m so sorry, Babs,” I said, suddenly feeling like not only a very inadequate captain, but also like a very inadequate friend.

  “And I am so sorry for interrupting,” Devin said as he shot into the room. “But, we’ve still not solved this whole situation. Claudius has a Keeper on board his ship.”

  *

  I spent the next several minutes trying to console Babs while she, Devin and Gary and I rushed across the Monument, toward the bridge. Devin explained that, in this timeline, Gary and Kostas and I had only been gone half a day while we were inside The Error Universe. The Keepers had remained hidden in this layer of Krin-space where Claudius still was because the Keepers were busy trying to find where the three of us had disappeared to and because they had sensed something important from on his ship.

  Devin continued now, “Claudius is threatening to kill the Keeper he has imprisoned there if we don’t hand over the Monument to him.”

  “How the hell did he get a Keeper off of here?” Gary asked Devin.

  Devin shook his head fast, his breaths coming out of his mouth quite hard. We had reached the bridge area, and we were all practically running across it. “This Keeper is not from this ship. He’s apparently been with Claudius for a while. This must be how he knows so much about Keepers and how he apparently has some Keeper technology.” Devin’s mouth twisted a little.

  We slowed down as we entered the forward bridge area. And then I asked, “Are you saying this Keeper gave it to Claudius?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Devin said. “The ship’s force-field seems to be both outside the ship and inside a small area surrounding where a Keeper presence seems to be. The Keepers are having trouble mind-linking with the Keeper there.”

  I sighed in frustration and fear; I hated the possibility that there were bad Keepers. It made what my crew and I were doing on this ship seem different…. “Not a single goddamn good thing has happened on this whole trip on this ship.”

  I glanced at sad Babs, but when I turned my head the opposite way again, Devin shot a half-frown at me, and said, “You forget that the framework’s still intact. If that isn’t a good thing, then what the hell is?”

  *

  A moment later, Shirley and Chen rushed onto the bridge, and when we were done with hugging each other and my lightning-quick description of what I and Gary had been through, Devin told us to move to our usual positions on the bridge.

  Thura suddenly showed up. She was in an orange robe now, and Babs seemed about to rush over to her, but she stopped herself, her dark eyes imploring Thura.

  “I am sorry,” Thura said as she moved to one of the control areas on the right side of the bridge. “I must attend to the danger from Claudius right now.”

  Chen was at his usual panel behind me; he glanced up at me, but when I smiled at him a little, his head only shot down again. I frowned at his odd reticence. Normally he was so open toward me, and he’d hugged me hello only moments ago.

  I chalked up his behavior to the emergency we were in; then I turned to look at the front viewscreen, which displayed a view of the exterior, including Claudius’ warship. As far as I could tell from the emerald-like color and the large, electrified weapons-array running around the long axis, the ship was indeed the same one that had attacked the Demeter. And considering the warship’s location now, it was also probably where I had been imprisoned. My heart began pumping too hard.

  From behind me, Gary said, “The scumbag—why doesn’t he just drop dead already?”

  If only the universe were so accommodating. Instead, poor Kostas was dead, and creepy Claudius was very much alive….

  An image of his bridge filled the right side of the screen now. He was standing there in his dark uniform-suit, his posture confidently straight, and his head firmly tilted back as if he held all the cards in the situation and he was about to throw his winning hand down onto the table.

  I could feel angry color fill my face. I said over my shoulder to Thura now, “Can he see and hear us?”

  “No,” Thura said, her here-not-here fingers deftly moving over some buttons. “And we will be presenting a false image to him from this bridge. It will look like only a few Keepers are on it. You and your crew will remain hidden.”

  “GOOD,” I said, but then I ground my teeth together. A part of me wished Claudius could see me alive and well because his plan had completely failed. Well, maybe not completely….

  Now I said to Thura, “Kostas told us you couldn’t get on his ship—are Keepers still blocked from there?”

  “Yes,” Thura said. “We do not know that much about Claudius’ past history. When we entered his ship outside of the Rintu cloud months ago, we could not find much historical information in his computer. We could not even find the ship’s name. It apparently does not have one.

  “But the humans in The Reimark Layer are not necessarily normal humans anymore. They have apparently had close contact with remote alien species, and we know that the Reimarkians have sometimes received payment for their mercenary services in the form of other technologies. We do not know exactly what they have. We have unfortunately had to learn about that as we go along.

  “Claudius must have acquired new technologies since we last met. We are unable to penetrate his new shielding because it is harmful to us and also because it is randomly generated and pulsing extremely quickly. We Keepers can only slip inside a pattern that flickers slower than we can. We have found one small weakness in the warship’s shielding, which we have been exploiting to watch the inside. We continue to look for more weaknesses.”

  “And we hope to keep him talking while we work on defeating him,” Devin added now.

  I frowned up at the screen, where Claudius was gesturing orders to a woman at the forward controls. Going on his routine facial expressions and motions, it didn’t seem as if Claudius knew we were watching him. “I’m telling you all that he will not negotiate on anything in any way.”

  Another orange-robed Keeper suddenly walked onto the bridge, and though I couldn’t hear anything that Keeper and Thura were saying, I could have sworn I felt them talking over a mind-link.

  “Thura,” I said, “how are you even back here now? Where is Kostas’—” I had almost said, “Kostas’ body,” but I remembered Babs was on the bridge.

  “We have laid Kostas in a cocoon,” Thura replied. “We will address what has happened to her later. Although we are safe on this ship now from Claudius, especially because we have just finished an upgrade on our shielding, we should still get away from him as soon as possible.”

  From behind me and to the right of me, one of Gary’s hands shot toward the viewscreen. “How can we just leave him to do what he wants now? Look what happened when I rescued Lydia—she could have died in The Error Universe, and Kostas did die.”

  Thura turned to us, and her reddish face
beneath her robe’s hood began fading in and out of this dimension faster, especially her gold-tinted chin. “Gary,” she said now, in a much quieter voice, “you must control your agitation. We need you to think.”

  A brief, very tense silence filled the bridge.

  Gary’s brown eyebrows finally shot up at Thura and his mouth dropped open. “Why me?”

  “Because,” Thura said, but that was all she said. She moved to where the other robed Keeper was working at the controls of those odd green tubes that the Keepers supposedly used for navigating inside the Monument. Maybe they were making technical changes there because the tubes were transporters, which apparently were no longer totally safe from Claudius’ abilities—

  “Captain Lydia,” came Shirley’s voice, Shirley’s shaking voice, her eyes glancing my way, “we just got a text message from the warship. It says: ‘Keepers, we are waiting for your response. Your Keeper comrade is especially waiting—with a deadly weapon aimed at him’.”

  My eyes widened. “Now what?” I asked fast, my eyes rushing to the Keepers.

  However, Devin spoke: “We will open a communications-line between ships, but only I will be speaking.”

  “Captain, are you there?” someone suddenly said—Steve’s deep voice.

  I pushed the black communicator button for the engine area. “Yes—I’m here, Steve.”

  “We’re all very glad you’re back! The workers had all of us crew take our usual Monument stations. We’re waiting on orders about what to do with the third room-engine.”

  I glanced at Devin on my right, but his dark profile was fixed on his own hands working at the ship’s controls. “Are we going somewhere, Devin?”

  His head shook a slow “no” back at me. Then he said, “Thura, I’ve started the façade and opened the path. Should I tell Purn to go to the engine-room controls?”

  “Yes,” Thura said abruptly.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, frustration shaking my voice now.

  “We have a plan,” Devin said.

  And then something changed on the screen: more people walked into Claudius’ bridge room. One of them held a controller, which was apparently for the large black box that was now rolling along the floor to near Claudius, where the box finally stopped.

  “Ah,” Claudius said now, “so I finally get to see the inside of the infamous Monument. Very impressive bridge. And, soon, I will be standing on it.” He nodded at the guy with the controller, and then a little viewscreen opened up on the black box, which apparently was a filmed view of what was inside the box: a sluggishly flickering Keeper with a stooped back, sitting on the bare floor.

  I thought I felt a strange sensation suddenly—anger, from Thura. But it happened so fast, it must have been my own anger getting mixed up with the situation.

  Claudius said in a confident voice, “This foolish Keeper didn’t realize that he was teaching me how to imprison him. If I were you, I would execute him for his stupidity.”

  A saw a muscle twitch in Devin’s dark cheek. “How do we even know that once you take control here, you’ll do as you say and release this Keeper and let everyone off this ship without hurting anyone?”

  “Why would I want to hurt anyone? I want your ship, not you.”

  I sooo wanted to reply to Claudius, but it seemed I had been left out of the Monument loop. I didn’t feel very captainly at the moment….

  I watched Devin quickly turn off the communications-line to the warship. He turned to me as he asked, “What do you think about his truthfulness?”

  “I think he doesn’t have any. But could he really hurt us on here? Is my crew in danger now?”

  Shirley had come up beside me, and we were both staring at Devin’s profile now, waiting for a reply.

  He finally said, “We can never, one-hundred-percent promise anything to you for in the future, with respect to your lives. But, working with us will most likely improve your chances of survival and longevity to a great degree. Claudius is a unique situation. Let’s work with what we have at hand, because this is an emergency. We really must get this Keeper back.”

  “Why?” I said fast. “He was working with Claudius. How do you know he isn’t still working with him? This could be a trap.”

  “Keepers may be naïve and unhappy sometimes with the nature of their own kind and what our jobs must be, but, Keepers are not deceptive like that. This particular Keeper has one of the highest degrees of mind-linking telepathy a Keeper can have. No matter the disruptive box around him, since they’ve moved him onto the bridge, Thura has been getting bits of clearer communications from him. He is in pain, both mental and physical….”

  Devin quickly turned on the line back to Claudius. “Every Keeper is vital to the work we do, so we must save every single one. We cede to your demands, Claudius Fentimani; however, we have one of our own. We will transport you to here and hand over this ship, but only if we can transport The Keeper along with you.”

  On the screen, Claudius’ whole body seemed to pause; the sound from there apparently went out now too.

  “Why did we lose the sound?” Gary asked Devin, moving up closer to the viewscreen now.

  “He’s cut us off—or at least he thinks he has entirely,” Devin said. “We’re back to only the visual spying through that lone weakness in the force-field. Strangely, we can’t seem to get audio through as easily. But, his twitching body language tells me that he’s desperate to do the deal whatever way—do you agree, Lydia?”

  I nodded rapidly. “I do. He’s one of those people that gets fixated on something, and it usually—and hopefully in this case—causes their downfall.”

  Claudius’ smooth voice came back an instant later as he opened his audio line again: “I agree to your terms—provided that you understand that this Keeper will remain with my weapon aimed right at it.”

  “That is acceptable,” Devin said. “You will be transported to a secure part of the Monument; your confinement will be on a timer. That will give us time to vacate the ship. Then you will be released to take over.”

  “At least you aliens are sensible aliens,” Claudius said, his face twisting strangely, as if he was struggling to not laugh.

  “Is he really so stupid?” I said. “I don’t trust him. He wouldn’t trust you crowd so easily.”

  “It does not matter,” came Thura’s sudden voice. “We must follow through.” Her flickering face seemed to nod at Devin.

  And, on the screen, Claudius was pointing his weapon at the black box and saying, “Remember: if you kill me, you kill him too.”

  “We understand,” Devin said. He turned toward Thura. “We’re ready.”

  Thura took her hands off the bridge controls; however, the other Keeper’s hands were not only flickering fast but also moving fast among the neon-tubes and their controls.

  The image on the viewscreen shifted to the inside of an empty, gray, cavernous long room. The other end of it was visible for a moment; then that gray wall gradually disappeared into the distance, as if someone were pulling it away from the other side.

  Diffuse white light shone down from the top of the room, but that top wasn’t visible now, only the gray sides, making the space look like a ceiling-less tunnel.

  “What’s going on—what are we seeing?” someone asked—Babs.

  When I glanced over my shoulder at her, her eyes were wide open and locked onto the screen. She hadn’t spoken in so long—I’d forgotten she was still here. There were tear-tracks all over her cheeks, as if she had been crying the whole time on the bridge….

  Devin replied to her now: “That’s the third room-engine. Claudius and his box-prison will be there in one, two, three, four—now.”

  A faint, gray, block-like silhouette suddenly appeared in the room-tunnel. The silhouette darkened as it continued materializing, and then it split into two distinct parts: Claudius’ tall form and the even taller bulk of the black box.

  The camera view wasn’t a close-up one, but I could tell by Claudius�
�� quick motions that he was disoriented and worried. He fumbled with his gun a bit, almost dropped it; then he pointed it at the black box. But his arm was clearly shaking as he said, “I’m here, you Keepers. Now what? This better not take long.”

  “It will not take long,” said a Keeper from somewhere.

  There was a pause. I imagined I could hear Claudius nervously breathing heavily—no, that breathing was coming from me and my crew, possibly Devin too—

  —The whole image on the viewscreen suddenly brightened, as if someone had taken a picture inside the tunnel using an old-time flash and a huge camera. The shapes of Claudius and the black box were there one instant; the next they were gone, as if they’d been absorbed by the white light—no, they had indeed been absorbed: when the light cleared an instant later, the gray room was empty again and the farthest wall had slid forward into being visible again.

  My stunned mouth had fallen open, but now I closed it some to say in Thura’s direction, “You killed him!” A part of me felt more worried than relieved about that. I was very glad for everyone on this ship—and for the damn universe, considering what a menace Claudius had become. Still, I never thought the Keepers would do something violent….

  Gary’s shaking hand suddenly slid over mine, but his eyes were on Thura as she finally said, “Claudius is effectively dead to this universe, yes. The physical part of him has been disassociated; the mental part is now secured elsewhere till it will be sentenced for its crimes, which sentencing will probably be a form of amnesia of personality, then a lifetime of service at a simple, pleasant task. He will never be back in this universe in any form because his brain has now been made incompatible with existing here.”

  When I finally closed my mouth more, it was to say: “So you’ve turned him into a worker-drone.”

  “‘We’ have not done this. It is the task and responsibility of others to do.”

  Now Gary said, “And the rogue Keeper? It looks like you killed him too!”

  Shirley had a hand pressed to her red-covered chest, and her frightened blue eyes were on Devin.