For the first time, he wondered whether it was playing a game. Whether, just maybe, it had never intended to free Nida. Whether it had simply brought them down here to entertain itself.
His jaw stiffened at that thought, and he regarded the blue light dancing across Nida’s face with new eyes.
Maybe the entity sensed his suspicion, because Nida took another step towards him, flattening a hand on his chest.
He wanted to catch it and pull away, but he couldn’t.
Again, he saw flashes.
Vivid, lifelike visions filled his mind.
He saw Remus 12 as a planet bustling with life. He saw its marvellous technologies, he saw its people, and then he saw the war that ended it all. A terrible civil war that pitted one continent against another.
He saw their cities crumble, their fields and forests burn, and their seas evaporate as a weapon of incredible power destroyed everything on the surface of the planet.
He wanted to shake back, he wanted to cry out in fear and panic, but he couldn’t.
He was still in the vision.
Then that image of destruction ended, and he saw Remus 12 at a point further back in its history. Its cities were less developed, its technologies much simpler, and its people happier.
As these visions intermingled, he got a strange sense of the entity in his mind.
It seemed to be sharing with him, in part, how it understood reality.
It had no theory of time. No understanding of the progression of one point to another. It lived beyond linear causality and explanations and in some realm far too confusing for him to understand.
Then Nida took a step back. Again, she removed her small palm from his chest. This time it felt as if she took away a part of him, and he stumbled forward.
“Do you understand yet?” the entity asked, its usually calm tone flaring with passion and haste. “You must find the time gates. You must travel to different points in this planet’s history. You must discover where the bridge to my dimension has shifted to.”
All Carson could do was nod. The visions were still raw in his mind, and he instinctively knew it would take him weeks if not months to process them all. But he didn’t have weeks or months. In fact, he didn’t have any time at all. “How do we find the time gate?” he asked through a rasping voice. He didn’t know if he believed the entity—he didn’t know if he could conceive of time travel as possible—but right now he realised it didn’t matter.
Barbarians had landed on the surface of the planet, and at some point, they would make their way down to these tunnels. He had to do something, and if that meant playing along with the entity for now, so be it.
“There is one in these tunnels.” The entity said. Then it turned Nida around, and she walked with strange, jarring steps towards the opposite side of the room. Together they travelled down a new set of stairs, and if it weren’t for the incandescent glow of Nida’s skin, Carson would have needed a light to see by.
Though the ceiling above him kept on shaking, and small, fine particles of dust kept on landing on his head, he tried to ignore it. He focused on following Nida.
He also tried to ignore the latent tingle in his chest from where her hand had touched his armour.
What was the entity? What was it capable of?
More to the point, where was it taking him?
They finally reached another room, and this one held yet another statue.
It wasn’t broken, though, and with a small stumble, Nida threw herself forward towards it.
Wordlessly, Carson followed, ready to pick her up if she fell over again. The entity didn’t appear capable of completely controlling Nida’s body. Every movement she made under its influence was ungainly and wobbly, as if she were nothing more than a doll being walked along by a child.
As they reached the statue, Carson looked up at it.
This one depicted a man of indiscriminate race and age.
His face was covered by a hood, but that wasn’t the distinctive feature.
What he wore on his wrist was.
It was a strange black metal device with intricate symbols carved across it. It wrapped around the wrist, but also sat over the back of the hand, straps of metal wire securing it to the palm.
As he neared, he noticed the device was giving off a faint red glow. “Is this the time gate?” he asked.
“No,” the entity replied as she reached up and, without hesitating, took the device from the statue’s hand.
“What is it then?”
“It is yours,” the entity handed it to him.
He didn’t accept it. He simply stood there and looked at it. “What the hell is it?”
“You will need it.”
“Why?” He stared into her eyes.
They flashed with blue. “You will need to fight the corruption. If we stay on Remus 12, the effects of the corruption will slow, but they will not stop. You will need this to fight them,” she held it towards him.
He still didn’t take it from her. “How will it fight the corruption?”
“It will hold things in place and force them back,” the entity answered cryptically.
“Not good enough. I need to know exactly what that thing does before I accept it,” Carson began.
“Please,” Nida said. It wasn’t the entity speaking. In fact, it was the first time Nida herself had said a word for countless minutes. She looked up at Carson, and he saw how terrified she was. “Carson, please, just take it. We can’t stay here any longer. We need to find the dimension bridge; we can’t waste any time.”
“But what is the entity doing?” he asked, his voice shaking with desperation.
“It’s not a trap,” she choked over her words, “please, believe me—take it. If you wear it, you’ll be able to stop me when . . . ,” she trailed off and took a steadying breath, “when the entity loses control, like it did back on Earth when I kept having those accidents with flying objects. You’ll be able to stop them with this,” she handed the device to him.
He didn’t want to take it. His objective, trained mind told him not to. But his instincts saw him reach out and pull it from her trembling grip.
As soon as his fingers clasped around the device, he felt its power, or rather his telekinetic implant did. The thing vibrated in his chest, actually rattling his rib cage. Before he could say anything, Nida turned and ran from the room. “Where are you going?” he called after her.
“We have to find the time gate before the Barbarians make it down to these tunnels,” she screamed at him.
He ran after her.
He actually ran after her. She was talking about time gates and devices that could counter the entity's terrible power, but he still followed.
Because a part of him was starting to believe. No matter how strange the entity’s explanation had sounded, the pressure of the situation told him he couldn’t afford to be sceptical forever. He had to proceed with an open mind, and yes, he had to do everything he could to help Nida.
Everything. He suddenly made the decision that, no matter what it would take, he would fix this. Not because the Admiral had told him to, but because he owed it to both Nida and himself.
So he ran forward. As he did, he turned the device around in his hand until he fixed it to his palm.
As soon as he put it on, he felt its power.
Its incredible, astounding power.
A power he would need far more than he could appreciate at that point.
For he was about to be thrown through time with nobody but the worst recruit in 1000 years to help him, the both of them plunged into a desperate and terrible quest to save the entity before it was too late.
Chapter 31
Cadet Nida Harper
She had to find the time gate before it was too late. Soon the Barbarians would make it into this tunnel. And though she could fight them, it would come at a terrible cost. The more she used her power, the more the entity would be corrupted.
She hadn’t told Carson that yet; now wasn’
t the time. Plus, she didn’t know how many blows he could receive and still remain standing. It was a miracle that a) he'd dealt proficiently with both the Barbarians and the entity, and b) hadn’t left her owing to the fact this entire mission sounded crazy.
Because she understood that none of this made any sense. Or at least it shouldn’t make any sense. But with the entity in her mind, it did. In flashes, she could see the world through its eyes; she could understand everything with its ancient wisdom. There was no time, there was no distinction, just the eternal flow of energy. That was the dimension the entity came from, and it longed to go back there with such sorrowful power Nida wanted to cry.
To think, that less than a week ago, she had been terrified by the existence of the blue energy in her dreams, and now she was prepared to do anything to protect the entity.
So much had changed.
Yet thankfully, she wasn’t alone.
Again, she turned to see that Carson was still there.
He now wore the device on his hand, and when he wasn’t staring around in thin-lipped worry, he was gazing at the device, his surprise and wonder obvious.
He would need it. She knew that, because the entity knew that. As time wound on, it would corrupt more and more, and it would lose control of itself. Objects would be pulled towards her, sucked into the vortex of the entity's power.
But if Carson could master the device, and if he could act quickly enough, he would be able to save them both.
As they ran through the darkened hallways, finally they found a room.
Carson slammed to a halt in the doorway and tried to pull her back.
“What the hell?” he screamed.
The room was full of floating stones, dust, and the cracked bodies of statues.
“Is it happening again? Is the entity losing control?” Carson called out to her.
No.
It was not losing control.
Slowly Nida walked forward and into the room.
The dust and stones in the air lightly struck her body as she pushed through them.
“Nida? What are you doing?” Carson called to her.
“This is the time gate,” the entity spoke through her.
He replied with silence, then, seconds later, she saw him moving through the floating rubble up to her side. “What do we do?” he croaked.
She stared up at the rubble slowly swirling around her.
It was a miraculous sight.
“What do we do?” he questioned again, his voice louder. “We need to act now; those Barbarians will make it through soon.”
As if to confirm that fact, there was a sudden resounding boom from the hallway behind them.
He ducked forward, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her down to the ground.
He yanked his scanner from his waist holder, stared at it, then returned it wordlessly. “They are here,” he whispered into her ear. He still had an arm locked around her middle, pressing her to the floor.
She started to shake.
“Open the time gate,” he pleaded with her, “open the time gate,” he repeated.
“It will take time,” the entity answered through her.
“How much time?” Carson asked as he reached around to his opposite hip and pulled out a small but powerful plasma handgun.
“Several minutes,” the entity answered as it bent Nida down to kneel in the centre of the room. She placed both of her palms on the ground. Then she simply closed her eyes. And she did not appear capable of opening them, no matter how hard she tried.
A slathering Barbarian could have been standing right above her, and she wouldn’t have had a clue.
“Nida? Carson called her name frantically, but when she didn’t answer, she heard him stand and walk right in front of her.
She wanted to shout at him to take up a defensive position, but she couldn’t. All she could do was kneel there and feel the power of the entity pour from her hands.
Again she started to shake, but this time it wasn’t just the entity leaving her body; it was the fact of what was about to happen. The room they were in was about to be attacked by Barbarians, and there was nothing she could do to help.
It would all be down to Carson Blake.
Chapter 32
Carson Blake
She clearly couldn’t move or say a word. Nida just knelt there, her hands flat on the ground as the blue light of the entity poured out of her and onto the floor.
It had told him that it would take several minutes to open the time gate. The only problem was they didn’t have several damn minutes. They didn’t even have several damn seconds.
Because he could hear it.
The thumping footfall that pounded up through the floor.
He fought the instinct to duck to the side, to roll, and to take up a position out of the view of the doorway.
Nida was behind him, and she couldn’t move. And if she couldn’t move, it meant that he wouldn’t move.
He would protect her.
With the sound of a cruiser coming into land, an enormous Mascar warrior came ploughing around the door.
Carson had just enough time to shoot at it before it shot at him.
But that wouldn’t work again. Now the rest of the Barbarians would know exactly where he was standing.
He lay down cover fire, simply blasting round after round at the doorway, hoping that none of the Barbarians would be ballsy enough to jump through anyway.
He was wrong.
Two rounded the doorway, and though he managed to blast one in the centre of the chest, the other was far more agile, and ducked into an immediate roll, then sprang up and slashed at Carson with an enormous, long, glowing electric blade.
Carson tried to shoot the alien in the chest, but the creature was too quick, and twisted to the side.
At the beginning of the battle, with nothing more than a silent command, his armour had grown over his head, forming a perfect helmet in less than two seconds flat.
Well right now, he was more than thankful for it, because as the Barbarian swiped his way with the electric blade, the tip of the weapon sliced past Carson’s armoured nose, and would have carved off a chunk of his face if it weren’t for the ablative plating covering it.
The Barbarian snarled at him, pouncing forward with the blade.
Though Carson tried to get off a shot, the creature was too quick and ducked forward, slamming into Carson and knocking him off balance.
As Carson fell, he revealed Nida behind him.
Before that, she had been largely concealed by the bulk of his form. Now she simply knelt there, in the centre of the room, with nobody to protect her while at least four more Barbarian warriors rounded the door.
“No,” he screamed as he grappled with the Barbarian that now had him in its grasp.
He watched, almost in slow motion, as two of the Barbarian warriors reached up to their belts, grabbed concussion grenades, and hurled them with perfect aim at Nida. They fell right into her lap.
It would take less than two seconds for them to explode, and they would likely take a chunk of Nida’s torso with them.
It was clear the entity could not protect her whilst it was trying to open the time gate.
It was down to him.
It was all down to him.
Carson punched forward with sudden and incredible speed that came on the wings of his pounding desperation.
As he did, he brought around his right hand. The device strapped onto it surged with power.
He threw his hand forward, and an invisible wave of energy shot out, blasting the Barbarian off him, and throwing everything else in the room against the far wall.
Everything save for Nida.
The entity had somehow locked her on the spot. But the two concussion grenades on her lap were not that lucky, and they slammed against the far wall, shattering under incredible force.
Even the rubble and dust circling the room cascaded forward, and in a sudden moment, everything cleared
, and he could see the room in full.
Then several more Barbarians rounded the doorway.
They shot towards him, and he ducked to his knees, rolling as quickly as he could. Then he slammed a hand into the cold floor, pushed up into a flip, and landed right in front of Nida.
One of the Barbarians lurched forward with an electric dagger, and threw it with perfect aim right at Carson’s chest.
Carson's hand lurched up, and with a blast from his device, he slammed the knife back, and it shattered against the opposite wall.
He heard the Barbarians scream and shout amongst themselves, but he didn’t waste the surprise he'd just given them. Instead, he grabbed another gun from his holster and blasted their way.
Though they threw several more grenades in his direction, every time one rolled towards him, he simply flung his right hand out and the device sent a powerful and invisible wave crashing into them, either obliterating the grenades on the spot, or hurling them against the far wall.
“Almost there,” he heard Nida say from behind him. And it was Nida; it wasn’t the entity. Her voice shook, and he wanted, more than anything, to collapse to his knees and throw his arms around her shoulders. But he couldn’t. Instead, he stood there and defended her against the relentless attack of the Barbarians.
If there was one good thing that could be said about them, they were dauntless. They did not give up, no matter what the odds. And that’s what made them such a fearsome enemy of the United Galactic Coalition.
Even though the Barbarians would have figured out by now that Carson was too powerful to be defeated by a head-on attack, they didn’t stop.
And they wouldn’t stop.
They would continue to throw warriors against him until he made a mistake. Because all he had to do was make one single mistake.
“Come on, come on,” he begged her.
He wanted to turn—he wanted to find out how close she was to opening the gate—but instead he simply brought up his right hand and blasted out another wave of power.
He was starting to realise he was getting weaker though.
Either the device was running out of juice, or it was tiring him out in a way he had never felt before.
But he didn’t give up. He just brought up his plasma handgun and used that instead. He fired round after round, trying to protect her whilst he waited . . . and waited . . . and waited.
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