And a microsecond later we popped out inside another quantum connected interference region in another cube. Mike projected the funnel-shaped field in front of us and steered us into the small end of the funnel. As we rose up through the funnel the outer diameter of our warp bubble grew. Less than a second ago, I was inside the Phoenix, and now I was standing beside Tatiana who was herself standing inside a dark bubble of spacetime. There was a white-and-blue swirl over the surface of the bubble and with my enhanced eyesight I could see her there naked in front of me. It worked! Traveling through spacetime on the quantum connected Infrastructure worked!
"It's about time, Steven." She slugged me on the forearm and then jumped into my arms. "I love you! I love you! I love you! Now get me the hell out of here!"
"I love you, now hold on to me," I told her.
"Like I would do anything else?" she asked sarcastically.
Mike, reverse the process.
Okay, Steven.
We left Mikhail sitting there in the bubble to fend for himself before two thousand years passed or the bubble was destroyed. If we could figure out a way to get him, we would do it—just not now. We popped into the supply room just outside of Michelle's housing and Tatiana immediately had the nanomachines redress her and bring her health to optimal status. She created a bag of cheeseburgers, fries, and a soda and began scarfing them down.
"It worked!" I shouted.
"I toolf eww it fwoul," Tatiana said with a mouthful.
We need to tell the others. This gives us an amazing advantage. I thought to her as I watched her eat. She was a sight for sore eyes, to say the least.
Okay. Hey, my temple implants still work without Mikhail, she thought to me.
They will function as long as you are within a few hundred thousand kilometers of me, Tatiana, Mike thought to us.
Oh. Neat! She thought in Russian and she continued on to her fourth cheeseburger.
I missed you!
Me, too, she said. I would have kissed her but there was a likelihood that she would have bitten me by mistake. Besides, there was a cheeseburger in the way.
Tatiana's appearance on the bridge of the Phoenix startled 'Becca at first, but everyone was pleased to see her and pleased that the teleportation of the miniature warp bubble worked. It was the idea of creating a funnel-shaped warp to guide us into the quantum connection zone that was the trick. Anson liked it a whole lot and wanted to discuss the physics of the concept. I told him that it was a trick an old Sequencer taught me. Only Mike, Tatiana, and I got the joke.
Tabitha wanted more information on how we could use the concept tactically and strategically. Her military mind and training served us all very well. So I quickly filled them in on my plan.Then the debate started.
"Wait a minute, though." Tabitha played with the red curl of hair on her forehead. "If we can go anywhere else why don't we just do that?"
"I'm not sure that that isn't the best idea. That is why we are talking about it." I shrugged my shoulders. "The thing is though, that wherever we went would be in Gray space on a Gray ship and then we would have to take it from them. It can be done." I smiled at Tatiana.
"Danmn tfootn!" Tatiana said as she forced a handful of fries in her mouth and followed it with a swig from her soda.
Anson chuckled a little. "Slow down, honey, or you're gonna bite a finger off."
"Haffen'tf eaten in fweeks!" Tatiana replied as she continued to stuff more fries in her mouth. She didn't actually need to eat. The nanomachines in the stockroom had returned her health, but she really hadn't eaten in weeks.
"If we go now, without taking care of Sunshine out there, we might live to regret it in the future," Jim said. "But what do we do exactly? We can't just leave the bomb behind. Opolawn would detect it and stop it. "
"We have to distract him somehow, and then we have to get away from him," Tabitha thought out loud.
"How about this," Tatiana said, finally without food in her mouth. She reached in my front pocket and pulled out the golf ball and the controller. She held the golf-ball-sized bomb in her right hand and the controller in her left hand. "Mike, can you hear me?"
"Yes, Tataiana."
"Can you make the bomb look just like the controller?" she said.
"Yes, Tatiana. Hand it to Steven," Mike replied.
Tatiana handed the golf ball back to me. I held the golf ball in my right hand and it got fuzzy around the edges. It changed colors and then formed itself into an exact replica of the controller.
"Will it still go boom, Mike?" I asked.
"Only if you want it to," he said.
Then Tatiana ran for the door at more than fifty kilometers per hour and she was gone and the picophage controller went with her. It didn't dawn on us that she would be under Opolawn's control if we brought her out of the Gray's confinement bubble and on Opolawn's doorstep. Mikhail was no longer in her belly; the little piece of Gray technology must've somehow been "vaccinating" her from Opolawn's control. I should've figured that out. Perhaps I should have even waited about freeing Tatiana. That was dumb. I took off after her but she had too big a head start and she knew where she was going and I didn't.
Mike, track her for me.
Looks like she is going to the hangar bay, Steven.
Got it. Thanks!
Fortunately, she hadn't put on a warp armor belt yet since we got her back. I caught up with her in the hangar bay because she had to slow down to open the door—manually. Manually, hell; she ripped it right off the hinges—or whatever you would call that alien door-sliding mechanism. I made a mental note that the door wasn't made from the alien degenerate matter like the hull was. I tackled her from behind and she rolled with my momentum and tossed me thirty meters into the ceiling of the hangar bay. That hurt. I jumped from the ceiling as I began to fall, pushing myself at her. I just missed her but caught a metal hairpin in the shoulder.
The nanomachines healed the wound before she stabbed at me the second time. I leapt over her, but she jumped upward into me as soon as I was over her head. She caught me with her left arm and stabbed me in the neck with a second hairpin. This stunned me a bit as the pin actually grazed my spinal cord. Tatiana tossed me to the floor hard and ignored me for a microsecond. The nanomachines fixed the damage to my spine and dissolved the metal hairpin. Then I had the alien armor suit cover my entire body. I didn't want a metal stick through the cerebellum. The last drop of blood from my neck wound dropped just as the alien armor suit covered the spot and I rose to my feet.
I shook my head and got my bearings. At about a hundred kilometers per hour Tatiana lunged into my chest with both feet. This time I had a slight blur in my peripheral vision that warned me. My enhanced reflexes forced me to twist and drop just as she hit me. This allowed me to move with her momentum and the impact didn't hurt near as much as it could have. Also, the alien armor material that Tatiana had developed was doing a great job of protecting me. We rolled and swapped blocks, punches, and kicks until she caught my foot and flipped me. She did a forward judo roll on top of me and her knee twisted my chin sideways against the deck plating on the floor. When you're fighting, you lose track of time but I had a good measure of how long our last little entanglement had taken since I caught a glimpse of the drop of blood that had fallen from my neck splashing on the deck right in front of my face!
I lunged upward with my heels against the floor and pushed her off of me. Tatiana did a forward handspring and caught me in the chin with a back kick in the process. I staggered backward for a microsecond and then attempted to bear hug her. Yeah, that didn't work worth a damn. She dropped into a horse stance and head-butted backwards. The back of her head caught me square on the nose, breaking it. Had I not been wearing the armor the head-butt would have likely killed me. She stepped in behind my right leg and pulled me down to the floor with an elbow to the ribs to top it off. She was up and running before I could taste the blood running down my throat. The nanomachines fixed me up soon after that. I was rising to my f
eet when, at God only knows how fast, Tatiana slammed into me feet first, again. She was kicking my ass! It all happened so fast I barely had time to react and my reactions were slow because I couldn't bring myself to really fight my wife.
"Why is it I always seem to be getting in fights in this payload bay?" I asked Tatiana as I grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her over to the floor as we hit. We tumbled for several meters and came to a stop against one of the modified warp missiles that was stored there. "Well, that missile ain't ever gonna fire," I said as I ducked her barrage of kicks and punches. "Come on, honey, snap out of it, will ya! Fight the bastard!"
I was blocking her punches and kicks while trying to grab her. I couldn't bring myself to—really—hit her. I knew it wasn't her doing this. It couldn't be her.
Tatiana, what are you doing?
Tatiana is not home, little monkey. Opolawn's voice came to me through Tatiana's mind link. This was enough to startle me and throw me off guard for a split microsecond. That was all that Tatiana, uh, Opolawn, needed.
She caught me with a right hook to the head and then dropped and grabbed me by the ankles and yanked my feet out from under me. As I lost my balance she tossed me headfirst into the bulkhead. I hit the wall with a massive crack and my head poked clean through the metal wall and into the hallway on the other side.
"That hurt!" I saw stars for several seconds before the nanomachines could right my injuries. I pulled myself back through the hole in the wall and shook myself off. I was too late.
Tatiana was already in the smaller Gray ship and had opened the bay doors. She couldn't get anywhere in the little ship though because the outside warp bubble was still in place around the Phoenix.
Let her go, Opolawn, she can't get out!
Why would I do that, monkey?
"Steven? What is going on!? Where are you!?" Tabitha's voice came over the comm.
"Don't open the warp bubble, Tabitha. Opolawn is controlling Tatiana and she is trying to fly off the Phoenix with the smaller Gray ship," I called back to her.
"Roger that!" Tabitha responded.
Tatiana, fight him. Snap out of it, baby!
That will do you no good, monkey. No human has ever overcome the Himbroozya before.
Yeah, well, nobody bats a thousand!
Let her out or I will force her to fly into the warp field wall at high velocity. The little bug ship will probably bounce around inside the bubble and beat all of you even more senseless than you are.
Stop it!
Let her go.
No!
Then you will all die. The little Gray ship lifted slowly off the deck plating and hovered for a second.
Okay! Wait! Opolawn, wait! But not her. I'll meet you on the surface with the controller, but you have to let her alone now!
Brave monkey. Very well.
Steven? Tatiana's mind voice came to me.
Tatiana, land the craft and come to me. She landed the little spaceship and crawled out of it. I took the controller from her and put it in my pocket with the replica. I wasn't worried about confusing them—Mike knew the difference. As soon as Tatiana handed me the controller a small warp field formed around her. I turned and there was Anson pointing his little warp field projection device at her.
"It's for her own good, son!" he said.
"I agree," I told him.
CHAPTER 27
I had my alien armor suit on everywhere except for my head. I figured that Opolawn wouldn't recognize me and would think I was up to something if he couldn't see my face. I also grabbed an extra warp armor belt in case mine went out. I wanted to be prepared for anything, whether I would need another one or not. "Be prepared" was the only credo that seemed to make any sense to me at this point. So I grabbed everything I had with me that would fit in my pockets. I put on my double shoulder-harnessed nine-millimeter Glocks just in case. I didn't think that a handgun was going to do me any good in a high-tech battle against a creature as powerful as Opolawn, but again, be prepared.
I hadn't told Opolawn how or where on the surface I would meet him, so I called out over the YIT to him and he opened a communications channel. I told him I was coming out and that I would meet him on the ground at the landing field we were at earlier. He agreed to that location and told me that he was losing his patience and that I had two minutes.
Tabitha set up two warp bubbles around the Phoenix. The first one was the one that was already in place and was holding off Opolawn's yellow tractor beam. She adjusted the interior space of the bubble enough so that she could project a second bubble. I flew the little alien ship out past the location for the inner bubble and she turned it on and turned off the outer bubble. The light bombarded the ship and the bubble and Opolawn's air force was surprised because fourteen ships surrounding the Phoenix's warp bubble opened fire on it when the outer field went down.
"CLEVER MONKEY." Opolawn's voice boomed over the Gray ship's intercom as several of his fighters fell in beside me. I kept my warp armor on just in case he tried something fishy.
"You didn't think we were that stupid, did you?" I called back at him and faked a laugh.
I landed the ship meters away from where we had landed the Phoenix earlier that day and I hopped out onto the platform where I had dumped Prawmitoos.
"Okay, Opolawn, here I am!" I yelled up at the blinding miniature sun.
Opolawn drifted slowly down to the ground and dimmed himself slightly. He almost dimmed himself enough that you could tell it was nighttime.
"Hand over the controller, monkey, and no tricks," he said.
I placed the replica controller on the ground in front of me and backed up so the controller was on the edge of the bubble. I expanded the warp armor bubble to its maximum and then I turned on the second warp bubble. The second bubble I kept nearly skintight so I could turn off the outer bubble, leaving the picophage control mechanism lying on the ground unprotected and between myself and the alien.
Opolawn began to laugh as he walked toward the device confidently, and arrogantly he said, "Monkey, you should learn where your place is." He bent over to pick up the controller and for the first time I realized that his knees bent both ways.
"Now!" I yelled into the comm. Opolawn looked up just as the squeeze play warp missile appeared and caught him in a squeeze. The force of the implosion threw me back a thousand meters, and debris and rubble blasted through the air around me. I warped into Opolawn from a head-on position to keep him off balance. The impact sent him flying about eighty meters straight up above me since I caught him at the bottom of his protective field—whatever it was—and it was like I had punted him straight upward.
"Don't stop now!" I yelled up at the Phoenix as three more squeeze play missiles caught him. Then Jim and Anson zipped out of the Phoenix and began pounding on Opolawn's air and space forces with their warp armor. Tabitha and 'Becca continued to fire away at Opolawn with the missiles.
Mike, where is the SuperAgent down here?
It is in the hangar, Steven.
Show me in my mind, Mike.
Okay, Steven. Then I had a map of the landing field in my head and there was the SuperAgent, just inside the hangar doors only fifty meters away.
Mike, where is the transmitter of Opolawn's tractor beam? Show me!
Here, Steven. The map in my head scrolled a kilometer to the south and blinked where the beam was located.
Thanks, Mike.
I warped at top armor speed to the tractor beam facility and continued right on through the wall of the building and out the other side. I turned upward and did a loop-de-loop and straight down through the shaft of the thirty-meter-diameter dish transmitter. The transmitter aperture sparked and creaked and shuddered violently, but the thing didn't go out. So, I did a zigzag pattern downward throughout the facility, flinging equipment, debris, and red-eyed red-skinned pointy-eared aliens to and fro. Finally, the big aperture of the transmitter crumpled under its own weight and imploded. The tractor beam blinked twice and was
followed by a gigantic explosion and bright orange flash. The blast wake jostled me a bit as I blazed a warp trail out of the area and back to the landing field.
"Tabitha, are you gone yet?" I called her.
"I let loose about ten more missiles and then hit the gas! We are about two-tenths of a light year away and picking up speed. You'll have to bring Anson and Jim," Tabitha said.
"I understand," I said as I set down on the landing field. "Jim, Anson, where are you?"
"We are straight above you and headed your way." Then they appeared right beside me in static warp bubbles. "Okay, good. Let's get the hell out of here."
"NOT SO FAST, MONKEYS!" A flash of light from above scattered the three of us by a hundred meters. Opolawn fired his lightning bolt at us. The smaller personal warp fields were strained tremendously by the bolt, much more so than was the Phoenix's system.
Steven, your warp armor can't take many more hits like that one.
I was afraid of that. Thanks for the warning, Mike.
Okay, Steven.
"Anson, Jim, scatter and don't give him a target! Keep moving at high speeds!" I shouted over the comm.
"Roger that shit!" I knew that came from Anson.
"You got it, Steve!" Jim said.
The three of us got Opolawn in the classic dogfight merry-go-round. Anson would zip by him and then I would go head-to-head with him from a different direction, while Jim would be trying to get an angle on him. We rolled and tossed and looped around him at hypersonic velocities and would occasionally impact him. His personal warp field, or whatever armor he was wearing, was strong, but it was slower to maneuver. We had him in the classic fast, small, maneuverable fighters versus one big, powerful fighter type of air battle. Just like the MiGs versus the F-4s in Vietnam—Mike told me this. This was working well for us for a few seconds. We made several good hits on him and each time it seemed that his illumination dimmed a bit. But then the tide of the battle turned. Opolawn got wise to our three-dimensional battle tactics and took one dimension away from us.
He fought us to the surface, where the ground would limit our maneuverability. A second later I was staring closely at the Moon of Lumpeya City as I smacked into it. It was covered with civilization and I took out a good portion of ten city blocks. I rolled over and reversed back to Lumpeya City at full warp of the armor. It took about a second and a half to make it back to the fight.
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