The Universe Next Door: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller (Jake Corby Series Book 3)

by Al Macy

  She flew to me. “Jake!” She ruffled her neck feathers, a sign of happiness. Nice to be missed.

  A red dinobird appeared behind her. A zealo. “We have to move to depart mode. The enemy ship is catching up. Get these two to disportion units—”

  “No. It won’t work.” She looked at Guccio. “They won’t even fit.”

  The zealo addressed me. “Do you know what g-forces humans can stand?”

  “For how long?” Guccio asked.

  The dinobird turned to him and waggled his head.

  Guccio coughed his smoker’s cough. “We can take six g’s for ten minutes, eyeballs in.”

  “Eyeballs?” I asked.

  “Lying on our backs with the force pushing down, we can—”

  “Lie down.” Marbecka pointed to the floor.

  Guccio shook his head. “No. This floor is too hard for those kinds of forces.”

  Some holocontrols appeared at Marbecka’s side, and she manipulated them. A rubbery force field rose up a few feet from the floor. We lay down. It was like lying on a foam rubber mattress.

  “Hurry!” the zealo said.

  “Good luck.” Marbecka fluffed her neck feathers again. “Welcome back, Jake. You reside now on the spaceship Resourceful.” She and the others flew out of the room.

  Guccio said, “This is more surreal than I pictured.”

  The gravity, or acceleration, increased. With no pressure points under my body, it wasn’t bad.

  I felt as if I had one of those lead radiation blankets on me, as if getting an X-ray at the dentist. “How did you know that, Gordon? About g-forces?”

  “I was in the Air Force years ago, remember? Ever been on a spinning carnival ride?”

  “Yeah. Gravitron or something.”

  “Right. That was three or four g’s. About the same as a SpaceX launch. Six will be a lot worse. Fill your lungs, and just take little panting breaths. If you exhale too much, you won’t be able to inhale.”

  “Good to know.” I pulled in a full breath.

  “Squeeze your—”

  The g-force surged. Aargh! No more talking.

  Pain swooshed up from below my breastbone. My eyeballs were indeed trying to sink into my skull. I couldn’t move my arms. The skin stretched back around my throat, as if someone were strangling me.

  I’m sure it was longer than ten minutes. Did they screw up the translation from our time units to theirs? Every joint ached, and then it finally ended.

  I felt as if I’d run a marathon. I took huge breaths. “Is your hangover as bad as mine?”

  No answer. His eyes were closed. I figured Guccio weighed around two fifty normally. Was it worse for someone who weighed that much? Fifteen hundred pounds at six g’s.

  With the release, I felt weightless, but there must have been some gravity because I didn’t float away.

  I got up and kneeled beside Guccio. “Gordon. Gordon, can you hear me?” I slapped his face.

  He threw his arms out, yelled, “Whoa,” and knocked my chin. I bit my tongue.

  “You okay?”

  Guccio blinked his eyes and looked around. “Yeah. No problem. G-LOC.”

  “G—?”

  “LOC. Loss of consciousness. I’m okay. Weird. I dreamed a huge dinobird was nesting on my face, and she—never mind.”

  Marbecka fluttered down from the ceiling. “All is copacetic?”

  “What’s going on?” I rubbed my shoulder.

  “We are being chased.”

  Guccio sat up. “Are we safe now?”

  “No. We’re going to repeat. Are you fellows in readiness?”

  I looked to Guccio.

  He shrugged and lay back. Marbecka flew away. It was worse knowing ahead of time what was going to happen.

  We got a repeat performance, and this time, we both passed out. I understood what Guccio had said about the dream. I had a weird one, too. Marbecka laid a massive spherical egg, and it flew away.

  When we came to, Marbecka hovered above us. “We’re done for now. Gravity is now Earth normal.”

  “Where’s the bridge?” Guccio staggered to his feet. “The control center?”

  Marbecka bobbed her head. “Be following.” She flew away.

  I put my hand on Guccio’s shoulder. “Bobbing head means yes. Tilted head means no.”

  We walked over to the passageway. It was really just a huge elevator shaft with no cables or ladders. And no elevator.

  Guccio pulled a cigar from his breast pocket and stuck it in his mouth. He looked down the shaft and up. “They know we can’t fly, right?”

  Marbecka fluttered out above us and called out, “Sorry, sorry.”

  Gravity switched off, and boom, we were weightless. We pushed off and drifted up toward the sound of Marbecka’s voice. Based on Buddha’s advice—enjoy even the bad times—I considered doing a somersault. My gut told me that would be a bad idea.

  * * *

  The bridge was circular, about thirty feet in diameter. The place looked like a theater-in-the-round. As soon as Guccio and I floated from the passageway, the gentle tug of gravity pulled at me. It increased gradually, and we floated down to the deck like Peter Pan.

  A perch ran around the perimeter about five feet from the wall and one foot above the deck. Six dinobirds faced the center of the room, and behind each, a sturdy cylinder ran from floor to ceiling. Each cylinder was wide enough to hold a single dinobird, with an open door on the front. I could maybe squeeze into one. Guccio, no way.

  Ten pill-shaped compartments were set into the wall, each the perfect size to hold one dinobird.

  A hologram occupied the center of the room, with two triangular ships—ours?—displayed in the middle. Looking at it was like looking into outer space. It winked out, presumably so everyone could see us.

  “Please lounge here.” Marbecka pointed to two chairs formed with a tinted force field. The chairs were a shimmery blue. All the dinobirds, even Marbecka, had made themselves thin—their feathers flattened against their bodies. They were afraid—instinctively trying to make themselves inconspicuous. Hey, I can see you all.

  I did a double take, recognizing a zealo from the video journal. “Drenast! Is Cree okay? You guys saved my life.” According to the journal, they’d saved me by distracting a dinosaur. It wasn’t clear whether Cree had survived.

  “She’s good.” He jerked his head back. “Wassup?”

  I caught Guccio’s little headshake as we dropped onto our crash couches. Gravity increased, and we sank down. Maybe two g’s.

  The dinobird across the room spoke. “I am Captain Falbex.” He pointed to Guccio. “Are you the warrior on this date?”

  “I have experience in warfare strategy and tactics, sir, but—”

  “We have the need of your help.”

  “I understand. I’ve gone over the materials that came back with Jake, but it will take time for me to come up to speed.”

  “At this moment, we possess two of your hours.”

  Guccio looked at me. I had to give him credit; he was adapting to this crazy new reality pretty quickly.

  His cigar wobbled when he talked. “What’s the situation?”

  The central area of the bridge flashed back into a massive hologram. It was like looking into a crystal ball, with those two ships at the center, labeled with callouts.

  Falbex reached his creepy hand into the hologram and tapped on a blue triangle. “This is our ship of current residence, the spaceship Resourceful. This red ship over here is the zealo spaceship Nasty. An enemy craft is pursuing us. We are in prediction that it will resolve to our whereabouts in two hours.”

  Guccio frowned. “You mean it will catch us.”

  I smiled. That’s how they speak, buddy. You’ll get used to it.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know anything about his capabilities?”

  “He has the ability to make his ship invisible, but we have found a way to ameliorate that. Nasty was able to wound him, but we don’t know the ext
ent of the damage.”

  “His maximum speed?”

  “We have observed him achieving an acceleration of twelve g’s, but perhaps with a top speed below ours.”

  “Can you outrun him?”

  Falbex’s crest popped up. “Without you humans on board, yes. With you around, maybe.”

  Guess we came at a bad time. I cleared my throat. “How is it you can stand higher accelerations?”

  Marbecka explained the functioning of the disportion device and the drugs. It didn’t sound pleasant, and I guessed it wouldn’t work for us without modification.

  Guccio pointed to the hologram with his unlit cigar. “Our biggest advantage may be that we have two ships to his one. He doesn’t have friends?”

  “Friends?” Falbex waggled his head.

  “Other ships?”

  “No, we would have been in detection of them.”

  “How quickly could we evacuate to the zealo ship?”

  “Absent you humans, the duration would be minutes. We would take the opportunity of our escape pods.”

  “And with us?” Guccio raised his eyebrows.

  Falbex rocked back and forth. “Longer.”

  Guccio described his plan, a mixture of “decoy duck” and “playing dead.” Apparently, in World War II, soldiers in the Red Army would sometimes lie among their fallen comrades. When Germans walked through what seemed to be a field of corpses, the Russians would jump up and attack. Guccio also described how duck hunters use decoys to attract flocks of birds. That part ruffled some feathers. Literally.

  We’d evacuate Resourceful and use it as the decoy/Red Army soldier. The dinobirds thought it was brilliant but way too risky. I convinced them we didn’t have a lot of choice.

  With acceleration off again, they herded us down along the now-familiar passageway to the “chamber of cargo” in preparation for evacuation.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  We floated out of the passageway and into the cargo bay. As vast and echoey as a basketball court, it had the chemical smell of a tire store. The far wall tilted toward us and a huge hatch opened to space. It was like watching Star Wars at a drive-in.

  I pointed. “Is that open or is the hatch just transparent?”

  Subtle flicks of her wings kept Marbecka in position above me. “A force field holds the air. It holds it in this chamber of cargo.”

  The zealo ship, Nasty, slid majestically into position beside us, maybe a hundred yards away.

  Wider than a battleship is long, it looked like two squat pyramids base to base. Red honeycomb patterns covered most of the surfaces. Unlike the pacifistic non-zealo crafts I’d seen, this bristled with weaponish protrusions. In particular, a pair of glowing tubes extended along one edge of the ship.

  Nasty’s cargo bay faced us. Inside it, dinobirds fluttered here and there, preparing for our arrival. A stream of evenly spaced escape pods drifted across the void, spiraling like footballs thrown by an NFL quarterback. Each passed into Nasty’s bay where it was captured and unloaded, reminding me of gondolas at a ski area. Behind me, crew members guided the modular parts of the paratransit device into our cargo bay.

  Marbecka nudged us two humans toward the opening. Apparently she’d gotten over her fear of touching us. She flew over and spoke with Jobex. The opening to the vacuum of space loomed larger. I flailed my arms and pedaled my feet. With nothing to hold on to, I had no control over my drift. Guccio bumped the floor, skidded along, and tumbled up again.

  I yelled, “Help, Marbecka!”

  She fluttered over and clawed us to a stop. “There existed no danger, but I apologize. We are often forgetting your lack of wings. And I was distracted. This problem is diverting our resources away from the collision problem.”

  Guccio pointed. His cigar floated through the force field and out into space.

  There existed no danger?

  He pulled another stogie from his pocket. Partial gravity returned, and we stood near the lip of the cargo chamber, the blackness of space at our elbows. The apparent cargo chief and his assistants flew over, carrying a desk-sized box. His feathers seemed rattier than those of the other dinobirds, and the tip of one wing was missing.

  I tilted my head toward him and whispered to Guccio, “See the flaring feathers on his tail? Means he’s angry about something. His popping crest means he’s afraid, too.”

  The dinobird held his beak open, another sign of anger, and then spoke. “I am disgusted of this procedure. It is unsafe. This container is inappropriate. Bad fucking idea.” He opened the box’s hinged lid, revealing foam padding and a device that looked like a boom box. An orange boom box with two levers sticking out from the top.

  Mr. Positive Attitude looked at us. “The drill is this. When I say ‘now,’ you two humans bounce into this container. We”—he gestured at his assistants—“will be covering you with more foam and then be sealing the box with emergency breach sealant. You will be force-fielded to the other ship, and the zealo crew will be cutting you out of the container. Questions?”

  “Don’t you have a shuttle or something?” I asked.

  “Not available.”

  “What is that for?” I pointed to the boom box.

  “Yes. Turn that on after we close the lid.”

  “But how—”

  “That conditions your breathing air. How is not important.”

  Guccio leaned over and pushed on the foam as if checking a mattress for firmness. “How long will we—”

  Two musical notes rang out. A descending minor third: ding dong.

  “Now.” The cargo chief flapped one wing at the box. “Bounce now.”

  We stepped in and lay down side by side. I put my hand on the boom box.

  “How do I—”

  Too late. They sprayed us with foam and shut the lid. I didn’t know how to turn on the air conditioner. I felt as if I were going on an amusement park ride, and the attendant had forgotten to strap me in.

  If I couldn’t get the boom box turned on, how long would our air last? The stink of our sweat warred against the plasticky smell of the hardening foam. I took a deep breath anyway. The foam had squeezed my arm into an awkward position.

  “How you doin’?” Guccio’s Bronx accent made me feel as if the Mafia were dumping us into the East River.

  “I don’t know if I can get the air doohickey turned on.”

  After a pause, he said, “Well, that sucks.”

  Twenty seconds passed. “Why is nothing happening?”

  A horn sounded, loud even through the foam. Bang! Our two-person coffin jolted as if hit by a wrecking ball. My brain was jolted inside my skull, giving me an instant headache.

  A second knock sent us spinning head over heels. That couldn’t have been part of the plan.

  Guccio grunted and groaned. “You get the thing going?”

  “No!”

  “Are you sure? I hear hissing.”

  I listened. The hissing was coming from down by our feet. The boom box was near my shoulder, but I couldn’t reach the levers. Our air was leaking into space. The temperature dropped. I pictured us inside a tumbling football heading toward the goalposts.

  My hand was inches above the boom box. I jammed my elbow down. It moved against the foam. My pinkie now touched the first lever on the boom box. I pushed it down, but it didn’t budge. I tried the other way. No movement.

  “Gordon?”

  No answer. I couldn’t reach the second lever. I pushed my elbow up then down. Forcing my wrist into an unnatural angle, my pinkie grazed the second lever. I pushed on it. There. Did it move? A musical tone rang out followed by some celano speech. The boom box started hissing softly. It was on, apparently, but was it too late?

  Bang! We slammed sideways this time. A sleepy, woozy feeling washed over me.

  Guccio yelled, “Crap!”

  What had happened and did we hit the upright of the goalpost and did we get a field goal and why was the stadium so damned cold and why were we still spinning and am I getti
ng enough air and where the hell am I and does this make sense? The boom box came alive with an earsplitting honk, and its anemic hiss gave way to a steady whoosh. I came to my senses.

  Something must have gone wrong. Did we miss the cargo bay?

  “You okay, Gordon?”

  “Yeah.”

  Our spinning slowed. Three knocks came from the lid. I tried to knock back. Couldn’t. My arm was stuck in the foam. I tried kicking with my foot. No go.

  Seconds later, the hissing from the lid stopped. I was still breathing, so I guessed we were now in a pressurized area.

  The whine of a buzz saw vibrated through my body. I tried to cover my ears but had to settle for scrunching my head to keep the sound from blowing out my eardrums. Light penetrated the foam. The buzz from the saw revolved around us and the lid popped open. Zealo arms-slash-wings dug in and flung out the hardened foam bits. Claws grabbed us and tugged us out of the box.

  “Don’t be dawdling. We are in battle.” Two zealos gripped me with their feet—no, claws. One had two claws on my forearm. The other had one claw on each of my calves. We flew off at a dizzying speed. My free arm slapped into the top of the paratransit device as we passed it.

  I tilted my head down and looked through my legs to see Guccio and his carriers close behind. Carrier pigeons.

  We flew into the inter-deck well, made a ninety-degree turn, and charged up to the bridge. I say “up,” because that’s the direction I decided it was. Directions were pretty arbitrary in microgravity.

  Our carrier pigeons dropped us off, literally, on Nasty’s bridge. The bridge’s layout matched that of the last ship, Resourceful. Marbecka and Falbex, who had evacuated to Nasty in their escape pods, were already there, perched on either side of us.

  Time to execute the second part of Guccio’s plan: turn Resourceful into a decoy duck.

  “Fire!” A large zealo turned to me. “We are now damaging Resourceful to make it look disabled.”

  In the hologram at the center of the bridge, an orange beam, like a thick laser, extended from Nasty to Resourceful.

  Falbex’s crest popped up. “Careful. Only at the tip.”

  Nice of them to speak English, even in the heat of battle.

  The orange ray cut across one tip of the triangle, severing it. Silent explosions puffed material out from the eviscerated craft.