by Jay Falconer
Kleezebee didn’t answer. Instead, he looked at his lead tech.
The tech nodded. “Won’t be a problem, sir. We’ve programmed the transmitters to scan the rift and match its energy signature. We should be able to piggyback the carrier wave, drawing additional energy from the rift to send it through.”
“That’s assuming the bugs leave the rift open the entire time,” Lucas replied.
“True,” the tech answered.
Chapter 30
Exchange
Twenty-two minutes later, the Krellians opened the rift in the same location as before. It started as a pinpoint before growing to full size, sending flashes of light rippling across the walls.
The aliens were right on schedule, adding a sliver of optimism to counterbalance Lucas’ growing anxiety. Unlike his colleagues, Lucas refused to pin all his hope on Kleezebee’s passive approach. The professor’s rescue plan was founded on a set of overly optimistic assumptions, most of which Lucas considered unreliable. If he was going to die today, he intended to go out swinging while standing on his feet. He adjusted the stunner’s position inside the back of his pants.
The elevator bell sounded, delivering seven additional security team members who scampered out of the lift carrying stunners and traditional 9mm handguns. They spread out in formation to take flanking positions in front of the portal with their weapons drawn.
Kleezebee slipped the transmitter necklace over his head, then moved in front of the rift on crutches where he waited for Bruno to join him. Bruno, who was already wearing his copy of the pendant necklace, bent down to snatch a one-gallon jug of deactivated BioTex. He carried the container in his arms, walking swiftly to Kleezebee’s location. Other than Bruno’s Sonic Disruptor vest, neither man was armed.
Lucas joined Trevor at the remote monitoring station along the front wall. He watched the screen as his boss and friend made it safely across the trans-dimensional bridge and stepped into to their home universe. The portal’s surveillance system was functioning perfectly. They could see and hear everything as expected. Lucas raised his left hand, then knuckle-bumped the elderly video tech sitting to his left. “Great job,” he told the tech. He was sure the tech already knew who he was, but he wanted to know the tech’s name. “My name’s Lucas Ramsay by the way,” he said, holding out his right hand for a shake.
“I’m Claude Vandersteen. Pleased to meet you,” Claude said, shaking his hand in earnest.
The monitor in front of Lucas contained the video transmission from Kleezebee’s pendant. Bruno’s feed was streaming live on the other monitor to his right, directly in front of Trevor.
Kleezebee and Bruno were standing inside a sparsely lit room with angled, eight-foot-long wall segments, which glistened like algae-green sheet metal. Based on Kleezebee’s earlier description of Krellian ship design, Lucas assumed the room was octagon in shape.
Three Ghost Force soldiers were standing with their backs against the visible wall segments, aiming their grappling hook weapons at Kleezebee. Lucas wondered why their warriors didn’t carry more powerful energy-based weapons, like phase pistols or pulse rifles. Granted, the grappling hooks were deadly and reusable, but their range was limited. Then he realized their enormous claws would make it impossible for them to pull the trigger on a more conventional weapon.
“Makes you wonder how they operate their ship controls with those claws,” Claude said.
“Yeah, it must be tough for them to wipe, too,” Lucas replied with perfect comedic timing.
Trevor laughed.
Lucas suddenly realized that this was the first time he had heard the Swede laugh. Perhaps the stress of the situation had finally gotten to his massive friend and Trevor needed a release.
The elevator doors behind them opened again, delivering another seven-member squad of men to the surveillance room. This time two of the reinforcements were Bruno copies. They joined the other men already standing guard in front of the still-open rift.
When Kleezebee turned to his left, the video pendant showed a human female approaching his position. She was stark naked, in her twenties, and full-figured. The other monitor showed Bruno turning to greet her, too.
“Looks like the women aren’t allowed to wear clothes, ever,” Lucas said. The amber-haired woman was carrying some type of hooded garment draped across her arms, possibly a robe. The rust-colored clothing was much too small to fit the creatures. The woman gave the robe to Kleezebee in exchange for his crutches.
“Oh, shit,” Lucas said, seeing the professor unbutton his shirt. “What if they make Bruno change, too?”
“He won’t be able to activate the vest,” Claude replied.
“Should I go through?”
“No, we’ve got it covered,” Claude said, typing on his wireless keyboard. “I can remote trigger the vest if Bruno can’t.” A new window appeared on the tech’s computer screen with a title bar that said REMOTE ARMING SEQUENCE. Below that was a red outlined button that said FIRE.
“Awesome,” Lucas replied, hoping he would be the one to press the kill switch. “Is that a touch screen?”
“Yep.”
“What about my vest?”
“The system will activate both of them at the same time.”
Lucas saw a partially filled computer graphic, like a meter, on the tech’s control screen. The phrase OUTPUT LEVEL was displayed in front of it. “Is that the vest’s power level?”
Claude nodded and said, “Sure is.”
“Why aren’t you using full power?”
“We don’t want to take the chance that we might overload the disruptor pads, so I’ve set the power level to ten percent.”
“Is that enough to kill ‘em?”
“Oh, yeah, many times over. The vest’s E-121 power supply is a much more powerful than we really need. When we tested it on the alien corpse, we were successful using only a five percent nominal yield. Ten percent should be more than enough to kill anything in that room.”
While Kleezebee changed his clothes, his body kept swaying and so did the pendant. The video feed jostled and blurred as it bounced around his chest. After Kleezebee bent down to slide off what Lucas assumed was his underpants, the professor’s hidden camera held still long enough for Lucas to catch a glimpse of the naked woman standing in front of him. She was still holding the pair of crutches. Kleezebee put on the robe and lashed it around his waist. His video feed went black.
“Come on, DL, pull it out,” Lucas coaxed him.
The video screen’s image returned to normal when Kleezebee adjusted the pendant’s position so it hung outside the robe.
“Good thing you used a pendant-cam instead of a button cam,” Lucas said, watching the streaming footage sway back and forth repeatedly until the pendant came to rest. He raised his right hand to shield his eyes. “Damn, a guy could get seasick watching this show.”
Both Bruno and Kleezebee faced the woman as she scooped up the professor’s clothes and walked away, giving Lucas a clear view of her shoulder tattoo. It was the same hand-carved branding mark that Alicia showed them earlier in the infirmary. Moments later, she returned with another robe, giving it to Bruno. “I hope that one’s a double XL,” he wisecracked.
“Let’s see what she does with the vest,” Claude said after a short chuckle.
Kleezebee kept his pendant trained on Bruno as he removed his pants. “God, I hope we don’t have to see him without his—”
“Too late,” Claude replied as Bruno removed his boxers.
Kleezebee’s camera feed turned away from Bruno, providing a panoramic view of the octagon-shaped room. The wall segment to the professor’s right had an arched passageway that led into another chamber. Flaming torches were burning on either side of the opening, making the room look medieval.
“Not exactly high-tech,” Lucas said.
When Kleezebee turned back, Bruno was dressed in the robe with his pendant hanging outside the garment. The woman was picking up Bruno’s clothes.
&nbs
p; “Since his clothes aren’t dissolving into BioTex, I assume they’re real?” Lucas asked.
“Ja, real clothes,” Trevor said, breaking his silence. “Vest not fit on uniform.”
The woman put Bruno’s vest on top of the clothes, and carried them through the passageway, out of sight.
“Is that going to be a problem?” Lucas asked Claude.
“It depends on where she takes it,” Claude answered as the woman walked back into the room empty-handed. “She couldn’t have gone far, so we should be okay.”
Four gray-haired men, all at least sixty years old, entered the room wearing white ceremonial garb. Based on their dress and mannerisms, Lucas assumed they were diplomats from Kleezebee’s planet. At least he knew that not all the men had been turned into Kibbles and Bits, giving him renewed hope that his brother might be returned in one piece. “Looks like a geriatric toga party,” he mumbled, trying to relieve some of his own stress.
The old men stood in pairs, facing the entrance. Two ultra-slender naked females—no more than eighteen years old—carried in an eight-foot-long banquet table and put in between the two pairs of men.
“You don’t think its dinner time, do you?” Lucas asked his colleagues, worrying that his brother might be the entrée. Trevor looked more concerned than the tech, but neither of them answered.
A Krellian sentinel entered the room with a female hand puppet impaled on the end of one of its tentacles. Four additional Ghost Force warriors followed in behind it, then moved to surround Kleezebee and Bruno.
“Here we go,” Claude said.
The sentinel used the female translator to say, “SHOW US.”
Bruno placed the one-gallon container of BioTex on the table and slid it close to the Krellian puppeteer. The elder statesmen closest to the creature removed the container’s lid, allowing the sentinel to slip one of its remaining tentacles into the goop.
“It must be siphoning a sample,” Claude said.
“Ja, need to test it,” Trevor added.
The creature withdrew its tentacle and began to speak on its own, bypassing the woman translator. Its language sounded like a computer modem on steroids as it whined and squealed at a feverous pitch. Lucas figured the alien was reporting its findings to the others, or perhaps to its superiors. There was no telling who or what might have been monitoring the proceedings.
Thirty seconds went by before the sentinel stopped its communication and then turned to face the other aliens in the room. Its chest plate lit up like the Las Vegas Strip with an array of lights buried deep inside its exoskeleton. The chest plate gave off a dull hum as the lights flashed in an irregular pattern. Lucas could see the faint outline of organs and other tissue inside the towering beast.
Bruno turned his body to show some of the other aliens whose chest plates were flashing in a similar fashion. Lucas assumed the Krellians were communicating with each other over some form of biological network. He thought the other bugs were receiving data from the sentinel, or perhaps all of them were receiving orders from a remote location.
A few seconds later, the sentinel raised its female hand puppet high into the air and squealed, as if it were celebrating. The other aliens joined in the festivities with their own rendition of the noise.
It reminded Lucas of a Native American war cry that preceded an all out assault. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he said.
The Krellian sentinel used the female translator to speak to Kleezebee, “SECOND SUBSTANCE MISSING.”
“I want to see my son first.”
One of the other warriors approached Kleezebee, opened its right claw, and held it open just inches from Kleezebee’s juggler.
Lucas looked at Claude, but the tech’s hand never moved. Lucas reached out with his left arm to position the tip of his finger a quarter inch from the touch screen’s FIRE button.
Claude grabbed Lucas’ wrist, pulling his hand back. “Let’s see what happens.”
“You can kill me if you want,” Kleezebee told the bugs, “but we’re not giving you the activator enzyme until you bring me my son.”
The sentinel titled its head, then squealed as if Kleezebee’s demand just pissed it off. “HOLD POSITION,” the creature answered through its female translator.
Both Bruno and Kleezebee turned their bodies toward the wall opening. Moments later, a Ghost Force soldier armed with a grappling hook device in one of its claws appeared with Drew wrapped inside its tentacles, carrying him like a loaf of bread on its side. It raised its empty claw, then opened and snapped it shut several times, only a foot in front of Drew’s neck.
“Release him and let him return to Earth,” Kleezebee demanded. “Then I’ll hand over the remaining material.”
“GIVE US MATERIAL OR CRIPPLE DIES,” the sentinel replied, as its chest plate flashed and hummed.
The creature holding Drew hostage raised its enormous stinger, swung it around and held it against the side of Drew’s neck.
“Okay. Okay. Just don’t hurt him,” Kleezebee shouted, as he turned back toward the portal. “Claude, go ahead and send Trevor through. Okay, I did as you asked,” Kleezebee told the sentinel. “The material is on its way. Give me my son.”
The sentinel let out a short squeal and its chest flashed twice. The alien holding its claw around Kleezebee’s neck backed away to make room for the other creature to deliver Drew to Kleezebee. Neither Drew nor the rescue party could escape through the portal; it was being guarded by a pair of Krellian guards. Bruno moved next to Kleezebee and stood behind Drew, who was now sitting on the deck.
Trevor stood up from his chair, grabbed hold of the flatbed cart, and rolled the stack of canisters into the rift. Right after Trevor stepped into the portal, both video feeds went black, even though the rift was still open.
“What the fuck just happened? Get them back!” Lucas shouted.
“I can’t. The feeds were shut down at the source,” Claude said, pounding on his keyboard.
Lucas pushed Claude out of the way, knocking the tech out of his chair. He raised the power level of the remote system to a hundred percent, and then pressed the FIRE button on the screen. “Ten percent, my ass,” he yelled at Claude.
Lucas grabbed the stunner from the back of his waistband and pulled open the Velcro strap holding the other stunner against his ankle. He ran for the portal with both guns in hand. On the way, he motioned for Bruno’s guards to follow him to the Krellian ship. Lucas yelled a commando scream as he jumped into the rift like Rambo breeching a terrorist encampment.
Chapter 31
Assault
When he arrived on the other side, his feet slipped out from under him, sending his ass and elbows crashing into the floor. Lucas rolled out of the way as fourteen of Bruno’s security detail stormed through the portal behind him. They, too, slipped on the floor, one after another, sending them sliding past Lucas on their butts.
“Welcome to the party, pal,” Lucas told the last guard to arrive.
The exchange room looked like a biological bomb had detonated: The walls were covered in a flood of orange blood, as runny chunks of the Krellian tissue oozed down from the ceiling, dripping into piles on the deck plating. It reminded him of Dexter’s kill room, minus the plastic.
When he stood up and walked to the banquet table, gravity tugged at the seat of his blood-soaked pants. The four geriatric men were squatting on the floor—cowering in the fetal position. The naked female translator was alive, but lying on her side with a stubby piece of tentacle hanging from her spine. Her face and body were covered in orange tissue and she was sobbing into her hands.
The security team deployed, in standard two-by-two formation, to cover the corridor outside the wall opening. Lucas lowered his weapons and searched the room for his brother, but couldn’t find him. Kleezebee and Bruno were missing, too.
Then he remembered he was wearing the disruptor vest. He looked down at it, expecting it to be smoldering—it wasn’t. He hand-checked the condition of the wires
and sonic pads to find they hadn’t overloaded as Claude had feared. “Too bad Dad’s not here to see this,” he said. His father’s invention was a resounding success, well, after a little of Kleezebee’s tweaking.
“Let’s fan out, search the ship,” one of the commandos yelled. Lucas assumed he was the leader. The name on the man’s uniform said Harkins.
“I’ll join you,” Lucas said, following them into the hall.
“Team leaders, I want three teams of four . . . Sergeant Nash, you and Phillips remain here and guard the portal.”
“Yes, sir,” Nash replied.
The three teams scurried off in different directions, each taking a different hallway. Lucas decided to follow the group with the commander and one of the Bruno copies. They went to the right.
The Krellian ship was divided into a labyrinth of short, angled hallways lined with flaming torches. Lucas expected the passageways to be filled with smoke, but they weren’t—they were only filled with the runny splatter of orange blood and tissue.
Each shiny, green corridor looked identical, making it tough for Lucas to maintain his bearings. He felt like he was running through a carnival funhouse, trying to navigate a maze of endless mirrors. Even if he rescued his brother from the bugs, he wasn’t sure he could find his way back to the exchange room.
The end of each corridor had an octagon-shaped hatch that forked into two adjoining hallways. Harkins made only right turns, which Lucas assumed was the most efficient method for searching the seemingly endless network of passageways.
Lucas kept expecting to be ambushed by a Krellian welcoming party as they turned each corner, but there weren’t—only more orange blood and tissue on the floors and walls. It appeared the range of the disruptor vest was far better than they hoped. Or maybe, his decision to max out its power did the trick.
Eventually they came across a twenty-foot-wide nook on the right. Access to the room was blocked by a lattice of black, riveted metal bars—stamped flat instead of round. Inside, they saw a herd of naked women, bunched together in the back-left corner. Many of them—two of which had to be under sixteen—had fully extended bellies that looked ready to pop. The floor was filled with a hay-like substance and reeked of excrement. It was a hundred times worse than the chemical smell in Griffith’s chem-lab back home.
