by Isaac Hooke
Tane lifted a hand to his face and slid it back and forth in front of him. He left visible motion trails. Sinive was doing something similar with her own hand.
“It’s like we’re in hell,” Tane said. The simultaneously high and low octaves of his voice sounded extremely strange, coming from his mouth.
“You’re only one step away,” Nebb told him. “Grizz, given the course and speed of our pursuers before we passed through the rift, what’s the estimated time of their arrival?”
“ETA six minutes, twenty four seconds,” Grizz said.
“Show me where we’ll be by then,” Nebb said.
Tane didn’t see the location, but Nebb must have, because the smuggler nodded a moment later.
“That will have to be close enough,” Nebb said.
“Energy shields online,” Grizz intoned.
“What are you planning?” Tane asked the smuggler.
“Didn’t you hear what Grizz just said?” Nebb replied. “When passing through a rift, shields reboot. That gives us a window of opportunity. A small one, sure, but still a window. Grizz, target the engines of the three smaller ships with the dragons when they emerge. I’ll manually fire the plasma bolts at the main baddie.”
Nebb reached under his desk and retrieved a joystick-like control with a trigger near the top. He wrapped his fingers around it so that his knuckles were white.
“Is manual control the best idea?” Grizz asked.
“Watch and learn, Grizz my boy,” Nebb said.
“Grizz, you realize dragons aren’t as effective in this universe, right?” Lyra said. “The beams are down-shifted in frequency.”
“I’m well aware of the effects,” Grizz said. “And I will do my best to compensate.”
The minutes passed slowly.
Tane glanced at his HUD while he waited, and noticed he had no link to the Galnet whatsoever: the connection had fallen back to the local Grizznet. One glance at that black display told him everything he needed to know.
There is no Galnet here. Nor any human civilization.
The rift came into view on the virtual screen. It pulsated a slight blue on this side, and Tane could see that its extents proceeded for many kilometers in either direction. He stared at that blue opening, straining to see something, anything. But no ships appeared.
He felt powerless. A passenger on the road of destiny, unable to control his destination.
“Enemy estimated to arrive in T-minus ten seconds,” Grizz said.
Tane stared at the display, watching, waiting. Something seemed off.
“Nine.”
“Eight.”
Tane realized what was wrong. He felt no nerves. None whatsoever. His heart rate remained calm. His hands didn’t perspire. He felt calm, his emotions strangely muted.
He glanced at Nebb. The smuggler maintained his white-knuckled grip on the control stick. A drop of sweat slid down his face.
Tane looked at Sinive next. Though she was weary, her knee was bobbing repeatedly up and down, and she bit her lower lip.
Am I the only one still calm?
Lyra seemed indifferent, and so did Jed.
Not the only one, then. Maybe I’m just getting used to tense situations.
“Three.”
“Two.”
“One.”
The rift remained undisturbed. No alien vessels appeared.
“Where are they?” Nebb said. His forehead glistened with perspiration by then.
“Maybe they changed their mind?” Positron said.
“No, they’ll be here,” Nebb said. “But no doubt they’re altering their speed and trajectory. Trying to throw us off. Grizz, get ready. They’re going to emerge from a random spot. At a random speed.”
“Do you want to switch control of the plasma throwers over to me?” Grizz asked.
“Not on your life!” Nebb answered.
A ship emerge from the left side of the rift.
“There!” Positron said.
“Not the one I want,” Nebb said.
It was one of the smaller pincer-shaped vessels.
More spacecraft appeared, three in total, emerging from random locations.
Nebb slammed the joystick forward, eyes focused intently on some secondary targeting screen only he could see. Then he squeezed the trigger.
The display flashed and twin plasma bolts shot forward.
The hook ship was committed to its current trajectory, and couldn’t change course in time to avoid the rapidly approaching bolts. The display zoomed in and Tane watched with some satisfaction as the unshielded hook ship was torn apart by the impact.
“That’s right, take it in the mouth, bitch!” Nebb said. “Boom!”
“A lucky shot,” Positron said.
“Not luck, skill,” Nebb said. “Grizz, how did it go with the dragons?”
“I successfully disabled the engines of two of the three ships. The third ship has lost only its leftmost engine, and is making a rapid getaway.”
“You know you’ve done something right in life when you’ve got aliens running scared,” Nebb said.
“We’re taking laser fire from the stranded ships,” Grizz said. “Shields are down to eighty percent.”
“Pull us back to a safe range,” Nebb said. “And make sure we’re beyond the throw angle of their plasma throwers, as well as their Essence lance equivalents. When our own throwers recharge, fire everything at one of the stranded ships. Their shields will be online by then, so we’ll have to take out each ship one at a time.”
The two disabled ships were easy pickings for the Red Grizzly, and shortly there was nothing left of them but space debris. The third ship, meanwhile, continued fleeing.
“They only have one engine,” Grizz said. “We could catch them...”
“No,” Nebb said. “We’ve already spent enough time here. It’s time to make the jump to Anteres and get the hell out of here. The surviving alien ship will be heading to a gravity well in the system to jump as well. When they do, you can bet more of them will be arriving, real soon.”
“Then why not stop them?” Grizz said.
“You really want to stay here for longer than we have to?” Nebb said. “We don’t really know what kind of damage their engine has. They might have it repaired by the time we reach firing range. Look, moon 57A is the closest gravity well. If they were heading toward that moon, I’d say yes, we’ll shoot them down along the way. But they’re not. The aliens are flying toward the far side of the gas giant, making it a chore for us. So no, we let them go. Set a course to 57A and engage thrusters at maximum speed.”
“Setting a course to 57A,” Grizz said.
Tane stared at the view screen and watched the stars rotate until the ship was in place.
“Engaging thrusters, maximum speed,” Grizz said.
Tane leaned back against the bulkhead. “So now that the excitement has died down, where exactly are we? You mentioned something about a universe that sits below our own? The Umbra? I checked my chip. I got nothing on that.”
“And so you shouldn’t,” Lyra said. “That knowledge is reserved for Volur, senior government and military officials, and those who fought in the Dweller War.”
“And smugglers with chip upgrades,” Nebb chimed in gleefully.
“Though if you listened carefully,” Lyra continued, ignoring him. “And traveled to the deepest, darkest nooks and crannies of the Galnet, you would have heard whispers about its presence. It is quite literally a universe that sits beneath our own. Planets, asteroids, suns, celestial bodies, human cities… almost everything that exists in our universe exists here at the same time, minus human life. That is where our universes differ. Light and sound also have different qualities here, which you are experiencing firsthand. Laser weapons are down-shifted in frequency, for example. As is the illumination from stars, moving beyond the visible range. However, some of the qualities of light are restored when you near the source, which is why you can still see inside the cockpit her
e. And why planets seem to be lit when you are close to them.”
“The Essence still works the same way?” Tane asked.
“Yes, but it can be used only near gravity wells,” Lyra replied. “Which is why we’re heading to 57A. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to jump to Anteres.”
“That sounds almost the reverse of jumping in our universe,” Tane said. “Where we can’t get too close to gravity wells or it messes up the distortion tunnel.”
“We can’t get too close here either,” Lyra said. “Nor too far. We have to be at just the right distance.”
“The same rules apply to the dwellers?” Tane said.
“They do,” Lyra said.
“So this universe sits below our own…” Tane suddenly understood where the pouch at his waist led to. “Personal storage devices are essentially mini rifts that open into this universe.”
“You figured it out, congratulations,” Nebb interjected.
“But if that’s true, shouldn’t all the items I put into the pouch be hanging from my hips right now and weighing me down?” Tane asked the Volur.
“No,” Lyra said. “The devices open into specific storage pockets in the Umbra, chosen during the design of the item. Usually these pockets exist in interstellar space here, surrounded by powerful energy fields to protect against cosmic background radiation and interstellar plasma.”
“So that energy field is powered by a generator of some kind, am I correct?” Tane said.
“Yes,” Lyra said. “Which is why the manufacturers of personal storage devices recommend you bring their gear in for routine maintenance every ten years, mostly so to replace the internal battery.”
“Cosmic background radiation isn’t the only thing the energy fields are protecting your items from,” Nebb said. He glanced at Lyra. “Maybe you should tell him about the crillia.”
“Crillia?” Tane said. That the word summoned not even a spark of recognition told him there was nothing in his chip about it.
Lyra nodded grimly. “The most basic inhabitants of this universe, crillia live in deep space, and are found both inside systems and without. They feed on the plasma from stars, along with elemental hydrogen, as well as any other higher-order elements they find. They avoid planets and other gravity wells, as strong gravity is deadly to them. They attach to the hulls of human ships that pass into this universe, and slowly break down the exterior. Presumably some have attached themselves to our hull already and have begun this digestion process.”
“Energy shields don’t protect us from them?”
“No,” Lyra said. “Crillia pass right through energy shields. They’re energy themselves, in a sense.”
“And let me guess, dweller ships are unaffected by crillia…” Tane said.
“That’s right,” Lyra said.
“So I guess it wouldn’t be a good idea to suit up and make a spacewalk right about now,” Tane said.
“Very good supposition,” Lyra said.
“I’m guessing this Umbra is where the TSN banished the dwellers after the war…”
“It is,” Lyra said. “But the dwellers came from this universe in the first place. It’s where they derive their dark power from.”
“So the dwellers came from here,” Tane said. “And I bet they aren’t the only other creatures that exist here besides the crillia…”
“Yes, there are others. And unlike the crillia, they thrive in gravity: kraals. We’ll find them on the planets and moons.”
“Kraals…” Tane said.
“They exist on every world here,” Lyra said. “Regardless of its gravity, or how close it is to the sun, or whether it even has an atmosphere. Some worlds swarm with them, others have only small pockets.”
“How is that possible?” Tane said. “Every world…”
“There are many theories among the Volur,” Lyra said. “Some say kraals only partially exist in this universe. All we know is, if they are brought into our universe without a special suit to protect them, they will die. Like the dwellers themselves.”
“How did the kraals get on all the planets?”
“Volur scientists have theorized they’re able to hitch rides on gravity waves, and throughout the eons traveled between the different stars and planets. They would have had to have existed at the beginning of time, and were flung across the Umbra at the moment of the Big Bang when the universe came into being. Whatever the case, they’ve populated every planet in existence in the Umbra, while the crillia are dispersed throughout all the spaces in between.”
“They’re like a virus that has taken over this entire universe,” Tane said. “Kind of like we’re doing to our own.”
“Humanity has a long way to go before it’s considered a virus on that scale,” Lyra said. “But you’re essentially right about the native inhabitants of this place. They’re everywhere. While the crillia existing betweens the stars and planets have remained mostly unchanged over the eons, the kraals dwelling on the planets have vastly evolved, independently of one another. So much so, that even on two planets in the same system, the kraals will seem so completely different you’d never know they shared the same evolutionary ancestors. The dwellers evolved from kraals that colonized a world covered in hydrocarbon seas, and they are the only advanced spacefaring race in the Umbra, or at least the only one we’ve met so far.”
“All right, so we get to 57A,” Tane said. “Once there, we create a distortion tunnel to the next closest system, or Anteres if it’s within jump range. When we get to Anteres, we head straight for the local rift, emerge into our own universe, and deal with the waiting TSN battle cruisers. Did I miss anything?”
“Yes,” Nebb said. “And that is: no plan ever goes off without a hitch. The very fact that we’re in this universe is evident of that.”
“Fine, barring any unforeseen problems, we’ll be out of this voice-distorting and movement-smearing reality shortly,” Tane said.
“That’s the spirit,” Nebb said.
Tane excused himself and returned to his quarters. Grizz didn’t toy with the breach seals along the way, thankfully.
It took about an hour to reach the moon, and when they arrived, Tane joined the others in the cockpit. Lyra and Sinive had apparently napped in their seats the whole time, and they woke when Tane stepped into the compartment.
“All right,” Nebb said. “Take us into orbit, Grizz, just above the lower thermosphere. That should be close enough.”
Tane had kept to himself for the past hour, and hearing someone speak again in that unsettling high- and low-pitched manner proved unsettling.
“Sinive and I still need to rest for at least another six hours before either of us can attempt to make a jump,” Lyra said.
“That’s fine,” Nebb said. “If any alien ships show up, we can just circle the moon for a few hours until you’re ready.”
“Lower thermosphere altitude reached,” Grizz announced. “We are twenty kilometers above the atmospheric reentry point.”
“I can feel the Essence again,” Lyra said.
“So can I,” Sinive said.
“Good,” Nebb said. “Maintain this height, Grizz.”
“Already maintaining,” the Red Grizzly’s AI said.
“Also,” Nebb told it. “I want you to run a complete diagnostic. Make sure any crillia on our hull haven’t eaten through to any critical systems.”
“I was just about to talk to you about that,” Grizz said. “We’ve got crillia attached near our aft port engine, and the Essence overflow vent.”
“How fast are they eating through the hull?” Nebb asked.
“I can’t really give you a firm estimate,” Grizz replied. “The ship doesn’t have the sensor capacity to detect at that level of detail.”
“What if we launched a drone to get a visual?” Nebb said.
“A visual wouldn’t tell us very much… the crillia will be piled on top of each other, masking the true extents of any damage. You remember the last time we were here…�
�
“I do indeed,” Nebb said.
“What happened then?” Tane said.
“Nothing good,” Nebb told him.
“I could go outside,” Jed said. “Shoot them off.”
“What’s the point?” Nebb said. “You shoot them off, come back inside, and ten minutes later more crillia will attach to the hull. And they’ll focus in on the exact same spots. When one crillia starts feeding, it leaves a marker of some sort, chemical, intradimensional, I don’t know what it is, but any other crillia that show up will congregate in the same areas.”
“I could stay out there,” Jed said. “Stand guard.”
“No,” Lyra said. “It’s too dangerous. If the crillia realize you’re a threat, and decide to swarm you, we’ll lose you.”
“What if we get closer to the moon?” Tane asked. “Gravity is supposed to harm them?”
“The backseat driver speaks again,” Nebb said. “Listen, kid, crillia don’t die right away in gravity wells. It’s not like we’ll be able to do a low flyby over the moon or something and they’ll fall off. We’d have to land for a few hours.”
“Then why not do that?” Tane said.
“And face attacks from any kraals living down there? No thanks. Right now, the best option we have is to maintain our current orbital altitude, stay inside the ship, and hope those damn crillia don’t eat through to the engine.”
“I’d be more worried about the Essence overflow vent,” Lyra said quietly.
“What’s the Essence overflow vent?” Tane asked.
Sinive gazed at Tane as if she was about to answer the question, then her expression became frightened. “Oh my heck!”
“What?” Tane said.
“Look at him!” Sinive said.
All eyes turned toward Tane.
14
“What?” Tane said again.
“You’ve got, it looks like... small dark strings coming out all over your body.” Sinive sounded afraid.
Tane glanced at his arm more closely. There were indeed small, dark threads emerging from his body. Although he’d been in the Umbra for a little over an hour, he hadn’t noticed them until now, probably because the filaments were so tiny, not to mention translucent. The darker blue shade the surroundings had taken on didn’t help. It was also possible that they hadn’t appeared until the Red Grizzly entered orbit. When he cranked up his ISO and visual saturation, he could really see them.