“What’s going on, Professor?” Lucas asked.
“Our scans of the rift provided us with new data. Looks like I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“It might be possible to open the rift from this side.”
“So we are going after Drew?”
Kleezebee nodded. “But we’ll need a plan to deal with their army.”
Bruno stepped forward and stood at attention. “My team and I are ready to go. Just give the order, sir.”
“Count me in, too,” Lucas said, patting Bruno on the back. “Trust me, we’ll get Drew back.”
“You realize this is probably a suicide mission, for all of you.”
“Then so be it,” Lucas replied. “I’d rather die trying to save my brother than just sit here waiting to be eaten by those things. Hell, give us some frag grenades, and we’ll take out as many of those ugly bastards as we can.”
“Look, I want to get Drew back just as much as you do, but let’s not go off half-cocked. We need to step back and think this through,” Kleezebee said, walking away with his hand stroking his gray beard.
Lucas moved to intercept his boss, but Bruno latched onto his elbow and said, “Give him a few minutes.”
The colorful tattoos on Bruno’s forearms danced as his powerful grip held Lucas in place. When Bruno flexed his left arm in just the right way, the artwork connected with a fresh memory in Lucas’ head. He suddenly realized the drawings weren’t just random artistry. They were imprecise and aging a bit, but he recognized the misshapen head, long stinger tail, and pair of claws.
He shot Bruno an inquisitive look, pointing at the man’s tats. “Hey, I just realized something. Your ink—they’re supposed to represent the bugs, aren’t they?”
Bruno nodded, his face turning sour. “I wear them as a reminder of what stranded us here. So we’d never forget what we’re up against.”
“Shit, and all this time I thought they were a loose representation of scorpions, or something along those lines,” Lucas said, studying the renderings more carefully. His eyes observed something new about the creature’s physical appearance—its segmented body. His mind churned through several ideas until one of them bubbled to the surface. It involved his dad’s failed pest control device.
Lucas turned to his boss, barely able to contain his sudden excitement. “Dr. Kleezebee, is it all right if I make a quick trip home to Phoenix? There’s something there I need to get.”
The professor whirled around and looked at Lucas as if he were sizing him up for something. “What is it?”
“An invention my old man was working on before he died. If my mom hasn’t tossed it away, it just might help us breech the Krellians’ stronghold.”
He shook his head, tightening his scowl. “I don’t think splitting up is a wise idea right now. The safest place for all of us is right here. We need to stick together.”
“Please, sir. For Drew’s sake and ours. I think—no, check that—I know my dad’s tech can help us.”
Kleezebee didn’t respond, so Lucas continued his plea. “Please, sir, I need you to trust me on this. It won’t take long for me to run up to Phoenix and grab what I need. I’ll be back before you even miss me. But I really need to do this. Right now, I’m completely useless around here and I need to do something to help get Drew back and stop all the senseless deaths. Please, I beg you, Professor. Let me go and do this.”
Kleezebee hesitated, then looked at his watch. “Fine, but you’re not going alone. Bruno will escort you.”
Lucas locked eyes with Bruno. “Okay, but I’m driving this time.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Kleezebee said, turning to his lead tech. “Is the jump station still viable at the hockey arena?”
The man typed into his computer, then reported, “Confirmed, sir. The pad’s still online and operational.”
“What about ground transportation once you arrive?” Kleezebee asked Bruno.
“Our van should still be parked in the underground garage.”
“All right then, you go with Lucas. But make it quick.”
* * *
Ninety minutes later, Lucas and Bruno returned from their trip to Phoenix. Lucas put a torn, dirty cardboard box on the floor in front of Kleezebee, then blew a cloud of dust off the top. He’d found it in a corner of his dad’s workshop next to a pile of old clothes ready for donation to Goodwill.
“So what do you have for me?” Kleezebee asked.
“My dad’s best invention,” Lucas said with a proud grin on his face. He unfolded the box and pulled out a black device the size of a cigarette pack, which was attached to a two-inch-square power transformer. He untangled the six-foot electrical cord before handing it to Kleezebee. “Dad called it a sonic pad.”
Kleezebee tested the device’s retractable legs before wiping the dirt off the ring of sensors lined up across its middle, directly below the miniature antenna protruding from its top. He gave the unit to Bruno.
Lucas pulled out another item lying in the bottom of the box—a notebook containing his dad’s handwritten notes. He opened the journal, fanning the pages to demonstrate its contents before giving it to Kleezebee. “Dad’s handwriting is worse than a doctor’s, but I can translate it if you need me to.”
“What’s this thing do?” Bruno asked, holding the sonic pad away from his body as if it were an explosive.
“It’s for pest control. And it works awesome.” Lucas thought about mentioning the device’s one minor flaw, but decided against it. He didn’t see how the liquefaction of a dog’s brain had any relevance to their current situation. At least the device wasn’t harmful to humans.
“Pests?” Bruno asked.
“Dad networked a series of these around our yard to kill scorpions. If one of them crawled inside the perimeter, the motion sensors triangulated its location, sending a finely tuned blend of infrasonic and ultrasonic sound waves at the creature. The blast was powerful enough to shatter the bug’s segmented body. They’d explode like popcorn.”
Kleezebee was busy skimming through the journal and remained silent.
“My dad hated scorpions. They were always wandering inside the house at night and after Mom stepped on her third one, he decided we needed to do something else. The commercial pesticides he sprayed were slow to work, if at all.”
“Damn ingenious,” Kleezebee said, pointing at one particular page in the notebook. “The pad emits an inaudible set of specifically calibrated sonic pulses to attack the creature’s nervous system.”
“Do you think we can adapt it?” Lucas asked his boss.
“For what?” Bruno replied.
“For the Krellians,” Lucas answered.
Kleezebee let out a thin smile from the corner of his mouth. “This just might work. But we’ll need to crank up the juice considerably.”
“I was thinking we could use E-121 for the additional power,” Lucas said.
The professor gave him a proud look. “Excellent idea. We can use it to power all of them.”
Bruno gave the device in his hands to Lucas, then looked inside the box. “Ah, boss. Looks like there’s only one.”
“Right now there is,” Kleezebee said in a matter-of-fact way, still scanning the information in the notebook.
Lucas knew where the professor was going with this. “You’re gonna use the BioTex to duplicate more of them, right?”
“Yes. We’ll need to arm each member of the rescue team with one of the modified sonic pads. We certainly don’t have enough ammo to take out a hive ship full of sentinels.”
Lucas smiled, feeling damn good about himself. “I figured you could use the BioTex for inanimate objects, too.”
“Yes, we can. Though Trevor will need to modify the replication code a bit. Granted, it’s not a very efficient use of our technology, but given our limited options, we really don’t have much of a choice.”
“Do we have time to make ‘em all?” Lucas asked, wondering how long it would ta
ke Trevor to make the changes.
“We’re good,” Kleezebee said, opening the Med-Lab’s hidden door and walking inside. Lucas followed him to where Trevor was standing and working.
“Rig a power source based on E-121 and make as many copies of this as you can,” Kleezebee told Trevor. “I need it weaponized by morning.”
“Ja, will do,” the Swedish giant responded, taking the device from the professor.
* * *
The following day Lucas was heading to the video room to meet up with Kleezebee and his staff after food run along the way.
The Krellians were due to reappear in sixty-two minutes for the exchange, but first he stopped at the mess hall on the way to fill up on caffeine—he’d battled a serious case of insomnia through the night, leaving him exhausted. He couldn’t get Drew out of his mind. He kept seeing his little brother sitting in a corner of a Krellian holding cell, surrounded by the blood and guts of hundreds of men, all of whom had been eaten right before his eyes.
The Jolt cola he grabbed in the cafeteria did the trick and energized his body, but it still didn’t change the way he felt on the inside. When he looked back over the events of the past few days, it all seemed surreal. He felt like he was in some low-budget sci-fi movie, one filled with endless twists and turns, almost too absurd for anyone to believe. Yet it was real and happening to him, and to his family.
If he and his brother somehow survived this mess, he promised himself to write a novel about their experiences. Even if no one ever read their story, he felt it was important to chronicle the events and to pay homage to those who’d suffered and died.
He’d spent several hours of the previous evening consoling his mother after explaining what had happened to Drew. It wasn’t easy to confess his sins and his failures to her, but he managed to get through it. He took great care to relay the tragic events with a positive spin, but despite his optimism, Dorothy took the news of Drew’s abduction extremely hard.
“Promise me you’ll get him back. I don’t care what it takes, you get it done. You hear me?” she said while hugging him tight the previous night. He could still hear the words ringing in his ears, stinging like acid rain on the edges of his heart.
Ever since Lucas met his brother in the orphanage, he’d been Drew’s protector. It was his singular, most important job. His life wasn’t about E-121 experiments, thesis papers, or fame and fortune. It was about Drew and the rest of his family. That was all that really mattered in the world—family. He knew it and accepted it, especially after he’d promised his dying father he’d always watch over Drew and keep him safe.
Yet when the Krellians came through the rift and snatched Drew, he froze like a total coward, showing his true colors. There was no denying it. He was a miserable failure as a man, as a son, and as a brother. His mom didn’t come right out and say it, but he knew she was very disappointed in him. He worried that if he failed to get Drew back, she’d never forgive him. And seeing the disappointment in her eyes was something he couldn’t live with, not on top of everything else.
After stopping at the mess hall for his caffeine fix, Lucas decided to take another detour to the armory before heading to the surveillance room. He went inside, planning to stock up on a few items he might need. He never bothered to get approval from Kleezebee to carry heavy today, mainly because he was gonna do it regardless of what his boss said, but also because this wasn’t the professor’s decision. It was his. He was going to do his job and get Drew back, or die trying. End of story. He was tired of being a coward and wasn’t going to let anyone or anything stop him. Not the professor, not Bruno, and certainly not the Krellians.
A traditional handgun would be too loud for a stealthy assault, so he decided to grab two of Kleezebee’s stunners, instead. He strapped one of them to his ankle and slipped the other one inside the back of his trousers. He put on one of the Kevlar vests lying in a stack to his right, concealing it with his shirt.
He went outside and stood tall in hallway, taking in a few deep breaths to steel himself. He was ready. Ready for whatever the universe had in store for him. There were only two possible endings to the story, and he was ready for whichever one fate threw at him today.
* * *
When Lucas stepped out of the elevator and walked into the video room, he found Kleezebee and Trevor fitting Bruno with a jet-black vest. Five feet away from them was a four-wheeled sled with a stack of five-gallon containers filled to the brim with scarlet-colored liquid.
The vest contained a series of bulging pockets with a set of electrical wires hop-scotching between them. All the vest needed was a few dozen sticks of dynamite and Bruno would’ve looked like a suicide bomber ready to take out a shopping mall.
Bruno’s street clothes bulged from under the vest—white polo shirt, dark slacks, and brown loafers. The polo shirt fit his sagging gut much better than his uniform top did, except it highlighted his baseball-sized bellybutton recess. The only part of Bruno’s outfit Lucas recognized was the pentagon-shaped watch. Overall, Bruno actually looked good in casual attire.
“What do ya think?” Kleezebee asked Lucas, leaning forward on his crutches to tug at the open belt clip hanging from the front of Bruno’s vest. “Trevor did a hell of a job integrating your father’s device.”
“Yeah, no doubt,” Lucas said, beaming a prideful smile. “Looks a little snug, though, don’t you think?”
“It’s not bad,” Bruno said, clipping the belt to close the vest around his midsection.
There was a second vest lying on the table next to Trevor. Since it was much too small to fit Trevor or Kleezebee, Lucas assumed the vest was for him. Either that, or it was for one of the skinny security officers to wear. He assumed they only had time to make two vests, not the dozen Kleezebee ordered.
“We’re calling it a Sonic Disrupter,” Kleezebee said.
Lucas picked up the second vest to inspect it. He was surprised to see six of his father’s sonic pads installed around the outside of the garment, each one nestled inside its own pocket. “Nice work. Dad would be proud.”
“Trevor constructed it out of interwoven layers of Kevlar, plus he added a few layers of graphene nano-fibers for added strength. Should be able to withstand one hell of a beating.”
Lucas continued his inspection and found electrical wires running from each sonic pad to a common pouch sewn inside the back of the vest. Lucas tore open the pouch’s Velcro closure.
“That’s the E-121 power unit,” Kleezebee said, holding up a push-button activator switch. “All you need to do is press this button to set off the pulse.”
Lucas didn’t see any wires connecting the switch to the vest. “Wireless?”
Kleezebee nodded.
Bruno walked around the room with the vest wrapped around his chest, though not in a normal upright posture. He was leaning slightly backward. “I don’t know. It’s a tad back-heavy because of the E-121 module.”
“We could add a counterweight to the front, if you’d like,” Kleezebee replied.
“Nah, if you make it any heavier, I’ll be too slow to react. I think I just need to get used to it.”
“Why are you using multiple emitters in one vest?” Lucas asked the professor.
“We tested it on the alien corpse and found we needed to use multiple combinations of infrasonic and ultrasonic waves. Otherwise, it had little effect. It took a bit of engineering for Trevor to make the adjustments needed so we could load the vest with the properly tuned emitters.”
“You should’ve seen the horrible mess when that thing finally popped,” Bruno added, looking satisfied.
Lucas laughed, imagining what the explosion looked like.
“It took longer to tweak your father’s technology than we expected, so we only had time to make the two vests,” Kleezebee said.
“I take it the other one is for me?” Lucas asked.
“Yeah, go ahead and put it on,” Kleezebee said, testing the trigger on the activation switch. “If something g
oes wrong during the exchange, I want you and the security team to do whatever is needed to bring Drew home.”
“So you are gonna let me help?”
“Of course. Besides, I know there’s not a chance in hell you’ll sit back and let us handle this without you.”
“You got that right,” Lucas answered, flaring his eyebrows. “Will I get a gun?”
“Not without the proper training first. You need to let the tactical team enter first and secure the area before you go in. Understood?”
“Sure, professor. Whatever you need,” he answered, checking to make sure the stunner was still tucked deep inside the back of his waistband. It was. He wondered why they weren’t going in ahead of schedule, in a pre-emptive assault. “But why wait until the exchange? Don’t we have the element of surprise on our side?”
“Yes, we do. But they might just return him without a fight.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you? After what Alicia said?”
“Well, she was rather emotional and could’ve been misinterpreting things. The smart move here is to try a diplomatic solution first. An all-out assault is our last resort.”
“Once we have him back, what then?” Bruno asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, let’s try to rescue Drew and not get us all killed in the process.”
“You got it,” Bruno said, nodding once.
Kleezebee turned to face his techs and said, “Once we’re back, be sure to close the rift immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lucas slid on the Sonic Disrupter Vest, but initially had trouble buckling the belt. He didn’t say anything about the snug fit, fearing they might discover the protective vest hiding under his shirt and the stunner tucked in his pants. He figured two layers of protection couldn’t hurt, as long as he could breathe properly. He finally got the belt clipped and waited for Kleezebee’s orders, which came moments later when he addressed everyone in the room.
“As a gesture of good faith, Bruno and I will step through with a small amount of BioTex. I suspect they’ll want to test its authenticity. Once they do, I’ll demand they return Drew before we conclude the exchange.”
Linkage (The Narrows of Time Series Book 1) Page 39
