by Grant Fausey
The hauler roared to life, backhanding the creature with heated exhaust against the scorched earth. Jake slammed down on the accelerator––punched it. The flying pickup truck shot forward, wheeling across a sand dune in the direction of the drilling rig platform. Krydal felt the vehicle arch forward, and smacked anything not nailed down, using it as a countermeasure. A dozen empty cartons, boxes, pieces of broken crate, anything and everything, hurtled out of the compartment. The situation was desperate, almost impossible, only seconds stood between life and death against the onslaught of fast moving creatures hell-bent on their destruction.
“Drive, will you….” she shouted, “I have this.” Jake pulled a side arm, shooting from the hip like an old west gunslinger. The young beauty snapped back from an energy pulse sizzling past her head and went wide-eyed with anger, shuttering at the thought. He had just missed her face.
The transparent monster exploded into a dozen pieces behind her. The critters were everywhere, swarming over the rear quarter panel in a bridge arrangement, interlinking to reach the top of the hauler, while climbing over one another in a feverish attempt to gain a foothold. Krydal tried desperately to keep ahead of the creatures, but she was fighting a loosing battle. The Chariot bounced, arched higher in the distortion field, shattering a rock ledge below the ground skimmer. Krydal did a number on the swarm frantically driving the hoard back into the wake of the convergence, where the Firehawk’s engines pivoted sharply into hover mode. The heated exhaust scorched the ground. The creatures lurched forward, disbanding in a rash of electrical discharges that sent a shockwave out across the ruins. The gunship pivoted to a new course, bringing the full force of its weaponry to bear on the menagerie of eight-legged scavengers. The war machine rematerialized out of thin air, cresting a wave of distortion like a whale rising from the depths of an ocean, at full blow, only to stop short of the threshold.
Jake hit the floor, dragging Krydal with him. He covered her shoulders with his body protecting her from the infestation. A hundred spybots vaporized in a single volley, obliterating the threat along with the hauler’s main propulsion ring. Krydal grabbed for the railing, tried to remember her emergency training, but acted out of instinct. The ground hauler was powerless and nearly impossible to control. The transport was on a collision course with the rig, heading straight for the center of the platform. The corporate liaison rolled with the flying truck, holding onto Jake as if her life depended upon it. They leaped together, flying out of the open-air tractor in the wake of the distortion, slamming into the recessed gunports along the forward side of the gunship’s main hull. The Chariot hit the surface with enough force to pierce the platform.
Rooka gasped, just in time to see the hover truck penetrate the rig. Jake could hear his little rat-faced scream, amidst the mishmash of flying debris. The lab rat closed his eyes…aimed for the sidelines. His heart fluttered, the rodent scrambled running for his life. All around him, the hauler splintered in the deafening roar of an explosion, lightning trails and flying machine droppings. The platform contorted, collapsing in upon itself in a twist of composite metal that buckled the girders, popping rivets across the scaffolding. The structure dropped in the high-pitched whine of twisting metal and antigravity motors. The whirling turbine blades split the fuselage, splintering off the chariot in a shockwave that rattled half the rig.
The bulk of the Chariot slammed into the forward driver’s compartment, crumbling the forward section in a fireball of charred composite metals, smoldering debris, and a heap of fragments lodged between the fabrics of different times. The copilot’s hair stood on end, his veins pumping in a visceral heart attack, his last breath seeping from his lungs, as his body squealing to draw in a replacement breath. He had survived the ordeal, but found himself on the receiving end of a lot of hurt.
Hundreds of shards crisscrossed the platform above the rodent, his pathway to Jake compromised by a battlefield of devilishly flame-tipped arrowheads sent aloft by some unseen archer, more deadly than he had ever witnessed. Rooka clawed the air, lashing out at everything tangible, but there was nothing beneath him to hold onto but a cracked ledge, and that’s where he was hanging by his fingertips. The ground had vanished. There was nothing to break his fall, if he let go. But he had survived. Jake consequently landed beside him with a thud, hitting the ground next to the rodent, outgunned by the weight of the hover truck. His eyes whirled into the back of his head, his heart nearly stopped, as he braced himself for the sudden impact he knew was coming, but didn’t happen.
Jake lurched forward, life disrupted in a frail moment of despair; his body nestled into the wreckage. The pilot opened his eyes, twisted into an upright position and looked at Rooka’s upturned nose as he sniffed the air. The experimental regenerative processor was beside him, nothing left of it but shrapnel. The device had detonated on impact.
TWENTY-SEVEN: Arachnid Fever
• • •
“Whoa….” said Jake, scrambling across the platform. “Anymore of those Arachnid things?”
“No––” answered the corporate liaison with a groan. They had fallen together, landing abruptly. Krydal squinted; there were several small fires between her and the carcasses of the spiderbots. They had vanished into thin air after the attack. Rooka stirred opposite her; his hands outstretched across the deck plates. “You okay?” asked Krydal.
“I’m fine,” answered the pilot. “Strangest thing how that ship just showed up like that then disappeared.”
“What about the others?” The space trucker sat up, reminiscent of a little kid with a bump on his head. Fortunately, Krydal had the cushion of Jake’s ego to land on.
“Oh, please …” chimed Nilana. The techno ghost crawled out from under the rubble, and brushed away a layer of dust and took notice of her companion. “Of course he’s okay.”
Jake looked in her direction, but didn’t respond to the apparition, figuring she was just another figment of his bruised imagination. He had seen her before, just couldn’t remember where. “I’ll never understand what it is you see in her,” she said. The hauler captain huffed; he didn’t trust his own senses. Krydal was real––therefore, the symbiont couldn’t be…it was a matter of principle. Jake had no intentions of letting his imagination run away with him. Besides, there was a more pressing matter to worry about. The platform beneath them was cracked. Jake felt the tremor, the stress popping the bolted on the sidelines. The structure was falling down around him. It just hadn’t happened yet. Nevertheless, there was a glimmer of hope despite the phantom cloud of dusty powder that was quickly dispersing along with the god-awful smell of vaporized exhaust in the wind. The big guy was charred to a crisp, his body burnt beyond recognition.
But how was that possible?
Krydal knelt down over what appeared to be the body of Hudson Warner. “I don’t think this one is gonna make it, old man,” said the ghost.
“Why do you keep calling me that?” asked the hauler captain.
“What?” Krydal glanced over at Jake, confused by his actions. He was mumbling something under his breath, but then again it sounded more like someone was uttering for him.
“Help,” echoed the voice from somewhere under the rubble, below the rudimentary fires that lit the background.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s not important.” Jake told her. The pilot slapped the dust off his wide-brim hat against his leg. “Just my imagination, I guess.”
“Your imagination?” Krydal had no idea what he was talking about –a way home, in the dead of night?
Jake punched his hat back into shape and placed it squarely on the top of his head. As far as he was concerned, the corporate liaison and her crew could fend for themselves. His intention was to get off Sodin, and quickly. The superstructure shifted under his weight, but he had to reach the others on the riser. The forward fuselage was unstable to boot. The wreckage of the ground-hauler was flimsy at best, a panel of stressed metal. The two sections were c
oming apart, distorted by the stabilizer behind the nose landing gear. At least, the parts disbursement would make it easier to salvage the antigravity ring from its housing, should the need of a lifeboat arise.
“Help me,” mumbled the muddled voice. This time, Krydal heard the voice too. Jennifer Riggs was in danger. Something was a miss. The Chariot’s metal frame was wrapped around a rig support column. The front quarter panel swayed, severed between the mainframe and the storage compartment. Her body was separated by both time and space, registering in both the past and the present.
“Man down,” screamed Jennifer, vomiting on the spot. Warner’s legs were crushed, partially decomposed under the wreckage. The man was barely recognizable, as if he had crawled out from under the rubble and died, his body rotting away the instant he crossed the temporal convergence. It was apparent on one side of the wreckage time itself had done him in; while on the other side of the hauler, his body had received only minor injuries.
“Do you see that?” asked the young woman practically coming unhinged. Hudson Warner’s lungs arched with his back in a spasm, as if he was unable to catch his breath. His torso turned to dust during the accident.
“Oh, my, God,” squealed the young researcher. “Where are we? Maccon grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out from under the grid. The spanner holding the frame collapsed and the front quarter panel crushed under the weight of the Chariot. The transport wasn’t going anywhere, and neither were they. “What kind of place is this?”
“Where we are isn’t as important as when we are,” said Krydal, attempting to reassure the scientist. The woman grabbed a hold of a bridging truss, and studied herself. Brenda Hutton baulked, a small town girl who was up for the occasional tractor pull, but not this. She was a rookie.
“What’s happening to us?” she asked panicked. A tractor pull was nothing compared to having forty tons of ground-hauler sitting on her friend’s chest.
“Time is disjointed somehow,” said the corporate liaison.
“Temporal flux,” added Brennan. The big man pushed aside a fallen girder and stepped up in front of the crew as if he had seen it all before. It was important to reassure his companions they were all still alive: Even Hudson Warner. Their predicament was a by-product of the regenerative process. The survey team was on common ground, standing in the aftermath of what had already taken place. The time differential just hadn’t caught up to them yet. Brenda Hutton slipped up to where Jason Maccon stood reconnoitering the threshold for some sign of a metaphoric physicality. The wreckage of the downed skimmer truck was smoldering less than a meter away. Its right side still intact, freshly jolted from the impact, the other half disjointed within the fibers of another temporal zone. The bulk of the craft had separated, suffering the stress of decay for hundreds of years.
Brennan wanted nothing more than to reinforce his stature, regardless of what was in store for the rest of his time-traveling companions. They were all out of sync, in different time zones and the corporate supervisor had to make sure they stayed that way. “Better not wonder too far off the beaten path,” Brennan told the others. “If we get separated, we may not be able to find our way back.”
“What do you mean?” asked the pilot, dragging himself off the platform onto firmer ground. Krydal took Riggs by the arm, trying to keep her calm, but it wasn’t working. They were all a little too on edge–each of them afraid for their lives. Even Jason Maccon and Brenda Hutton were looking a little ragged.
“He means we’re in the middle of some really serious shit here, cedar sap …” said Nilana. Jake heard her clear as a bell, but remained disinterested. Nilana’s perspective was a matter of principle, not conviction. Jake had no intention of taking advice from a ghost; especially, one who had apparently taken up residency in his head.
First things first, thought the pilot; he was concerned about getting the Dragon Wing off-world. The hauler was still on the far side of the rig … a real hike from where he stood. And, he was without the Chariot. Whatever the device had done to them didn’t matter; he was still in one piece thank God. He wasn’t sure whether he had actually traveled through time, or if the experience was simply an awakened nightmare. If Nilana was actually a symbiont in his head, it seemed a whole lot more important to get the Tigress off-planet and out of orbit before pondering the wonders of the universe.
“Better let me take my place, old man,” persisted the techno-ghost.
“No––” he said under his breath. Jake’s mood changed with a huff, he was more or less talking to himself. The voice was just loud enough for the others to hear, but not understand what he was saying.
“Quit calling me that,” he told the symbiont. “I’m anything but old.” Krydal shot him a curious look, but he was preoccupied and didn’t notice.
“Jake––” she shouted trying to keep his attention, but again, he didn’t respond. The pilot was making a beeline for home, across boomtown with hostel eyes.
“What––?” he said in a huff.
“Where are you going?” Krydal took another step. The rubble thinned about 10 meters from where she stood. Jake would cross a boundary without ever knowing it, and find himself either worse off than he already was, or reliving some experience that had already happened. “It’s better if we stay together, didn’t you hear?”
“I heard you––” said the pilot, annoyed at the thought of it. He wondered if she was stalking him for personal reasons.
“You’re gonna get yourself killed!” Renniska Brennan grabbed her by the arm, anchoring himself, persistent that she didn’t go any further.
“The processor is already active,” she told the administrator. “There’s no way of knowing how any of us will be affected.”
“She’s right, you know,” said the symbiont. “That thing will alter the planet down to its DNA.”
Nilana sidestepped the facts, standing between the two lovebirds. Jake glanced at her, pale-faced. The techno ghost’s perspective made sense, and that scared him.
“There are still a couple of hours until this thing goes off, right?”
“Not sure exactly how long.” Krydal told the space trucker. “In some sense it may have already detonated.”
The disjointed canister sat five meters to her left, the housing exposed, split down the side along the circumferential edge where the contents were set aglow in the iridescent greenish-yellow light of the aftermath. “I’ll take my chances with the transport,” answered Jake.
“No––”shouted Krydal. The corporate liaison yanked her arm from Brennan’s grasp, insisting that he wait. “You’ll never make it in time.”
“Rooka––”
“Right behind you, boss,” chattered the lab rat. The rodent looked back at Krydal, and nodded. He had to do something and quickly. Otherwise, things would get out of hand.
“There’s a better way,” she insisted.
“Right,” answered Jake. He was headed off on his own no matter what.
“Krydal don’t….” shouted Brennan, jumping into the middle of the situation. He needed to stop her before she did something he could prevent. But Krydal wouldn’t hear of it. It was inevitable. It had already happened, just differently. She looked at Brennan discerning. “You can’t,” he said, loud and obnoxious.
“Look around you!” snapped Krydal. She was slighting Brennan; his intentions were anything but honorable. The process had already begun. Jake rolled up his shirtsleeves, planting both feet in the rubble ready for a fight. He figured the crew could either follow him, and hopefully make it to the Tigress in time, or wait around and die. He liked his choice better.
“It’s my mission,” Krydal screamed at Brennan, expecting a display of clashing tempers, but the survey team didn’t react; they supported her decision. They wanted off-world as bad as she did. If the terra-forming device had already detonated; whether it was happening in the future would affect the past. It was obviously sending regenerative waves in both directions. Krydal could see the aftermath of
the explosion present in the convergence. The material was designed to alter the fabric of the world’s genetic makeup, and it was already affecting both the world and the small band of corporate scientists who accompanied her.
“Firehawk,” said the corporate liaison, despite Brennan’s objections. “Seven for extraction.”
TWENTY-EIGHT: A Place like no Other
• • •
“Gamy,” said Rooka, gurgling with excitement. “Would you look at that …” The sky swirled above the rodent, forming the mouth to a transit wave corridor. Krydal’s armor melded from concealment to take form along her body, altering her appearance to that of an ITOL warrior. Jake baulked, his feet sinking into the rubble ready to make a run for it. But Brenda Hutton stepped in front of him, blocking his way as she too took her place at Krydal’s side, adorning the appearance of an ITOL warrior. Her reflective armor melded into existence as if it had been there all along, hidden behind some light bending mechanism that allowed her clothing to be prominently displayed.
“This place is unlike any other in the universe,” Krydal told the pilot, stepping closer to him. She was eye-to-eye with her beloved, ready to confess her most guarded secret.
“And…?” The hauler pilot flinched.
“Time doesn’t exist here; at least, not in the normal way we understand it. There’s no way of knowing what effect our little experiment will have on us. But it’s important we cover our tracks. Sodin is a battleground. Right here, right now.” Krydal took in a long steady breath, and let it out slowly, readjusting her position to defend herself; she wasn’t taking any chances. “Something is changing the past,” she told the pilot. “They’re erasing the future.”
