Starblazer- Through the Black Gate

by Reiter

  “Which leaves the last pocket,” Dungias said. “I apologize that it is the last to be given to you, but it was the most difficult to stabilize and secure.”

  “Let me guess, that’s where you put another ship, right?”

  “No,” Dungias answered distractedly, giving the notion serious thought before returning to the moment. “This pocket dimension is meant to be your satchel.”

  “My what?” Jocasta asked. She needed to make sure she had heard him right before screaming.

  “It is difficult to be a functional pirate without some means of collecting and hauling discovered treasures,” Dungias pointed out. “This last pocket, which everyone has, addresses that point. It will work in conjunct–” Dungias allowed himself a smile as his back was just strong enough to receive another flying embrace from Jocasta. He let go a soft chuckle as he patted her on the back.

  “I don’t care how it works,” she said as she finally released the man. “You don’t know what this means, Z.”

  “That I am in line, in earnest, with making your visions of piratehood a staunch reality,” he said.

  “Okay, maybe you do know what this means,” she smiled.

  Dungias took hold of her shoulders to make sure she was listening to him. “Understand that the pocket is airtight and if you put something alive in there which needs oxygen to survive, it will die after a time. How much time will depend on how much room is available in the pocket. Completely empty, I would calculate about five hours for a normal Terran. Also, if they are armed and fire at the dimensional barriers, those barriers could break, causing a catastrophic implosion around the belt.”

  “And by catastrophic you mean…”

  “You would not have to be concerned with fitting into a size zero dress,” Dungias replied, “or the eye of a needle.”

  “Yeah,” Jocasta nodded, “that’s catastrophic. Good breakdown explanation, by the way.”

  “Using the gloves, you can create a net-like doorway, cast it over what you wish to store, and then close the pocket with the materials safely stored inside.”

  “Weight limitations?”

  “One thousand kilograms,” Dungias reported. “After that the fabric of the dimensional barrier will begin to depreciate.”

  “One freakin’ tonne!” Jocasta whispered, letting her mouth gape wide open. “Some experience with dimensional pockets? Is that what you said?

  “Speaking of…” Jocasta said, looking at the door of the bedroom.

  “The Living Key has already been secured to the wall,” Dungias reported, “and awaits our arrival.” Dungias opened the door and ushered Jocasta to exit. “After you, Captain.”

  Jocasta walked out of the bedroom and into the main area of the suite. Several pieces of equipment had been taken from the drones and put together to make a holding and scanning facility just large enough for one very uncomfortable man. She shook her head at the cleanliness of the structure, the extra equipment, and how it had all been situated. Dungias was not only fast in his fabrications, but remarkably tidy. The small generator powering the device was running smoothly and quietly, showing it still possessed over ninety-four percent of its power capacity. Aside from creating the gravity lock holding the terrified living key in place, it also maintained a field to reduce the amount of sound that could be heard outside the room.

  “You know, Z… at some point, you’ve got to let me look good too,” Jocasta ribbed as she walked up to the wall the strange man had been placed up against. “You can’t hog all of the stage!”

  “Trust me, Captain, the stage is not where I wish to be.”

  “And if anyone knows that, First Mate, it’s me,” Jocasta smiled as she took in a deep breath, moving closer to the trembling portly man. An unmistakable zeal fired in her eyes. There was nothing like staring wonder right in the face and daring it to give you its best shot. “Well, okay then, let’s get to work and pick this lock!”

  “You don’t know what you’re meddling with,” the Living Key warned as he watched Dungias walk over to a small computer station. He keyed in a command and then stood opposite of Jocasta. The man frowned at the apparatus that had been strapped to his body.

  “Hey, chubby,” Jocasta called to the man. “Bulletin point: if we knew… it wouldn’t be meddling. Get it?”

  “The Masters will have their revenge!” the man exclaimed before his neck was grabbed by a powerful blue-skinned hand. He began to gasp for air immediately as he grabbed Dungias’ wrist with both hands.

  “You better be glad he got to you first, key man,” Jocasta stated. “I don’t grab to choke. One good throat-strike is all you need.”

  “Be silent or I will remove your ability to speak,” Dungias warned. “Do you understand?” The man grabbed at Dungias’ arm as he struggled for air. Jocasta laughed as Dungias released his grip.

  “I love the way you ask a question that requires a response while you’re choking the guy.”

  “He answered me with his eyes,” Dungias said as he returned to his work. “I am nearly finished here.” Jocasta smirked, reading the lead-in her First Mate had provided.

  “Explain to me how this works again,” Jocasta requested.

  “In order to make this man into what you call a Living Key, an incantation of some sort was placed either on or in his body,” Dungias explained as he lifted a long, slender metal rod. “I will use this probe to trek the flow-dynamics of whatever Energies agent, or agents, there are coursing through this man’s body.”

  “And we are so far out of the ‘I understand you’ Zone,” Jocasta commented.

  “I will thrust this into his body, in various places, and map how the spell must be cast to open the breach-way into the pocket dimension.”

  “And we can’t just go in through a dimensional barrier you could whip up?” Jocasta asked, surprising Dungias with the use of terminology.

  “That remains an option,” Dungias replied. “In my experience, however, that could prove to be most problematic; there could be any number of contingencies in store for such an entry.”

  “Right you are,” Jocasta nodded. “Oh well, nice knowing you, Your Royal Roundness. Thrust away there, First Mate!” Jocasta looked up at the man, feigning concern. “You do realize this won’t be an out-patient procedure, right?”

  “Wait!” the bald man pleaded, gawking at the metal rod in question. “I’ll open it! I’ll open the pathway! But we cannot do it here, the Masters will know.”

  “Let us be concerned with that,” Jocasta snapped as she deactivated the gravity lock on the man’s body. “You have one choice ahead of you: we pick the lock over your corpse, or you open the door and let us in. And I’m all out of patience for this decade.”

  With his eyes darting back and forth between the blue-skinned man and the pirate woman, the man was uncertain what to do. He came to a point of clarity, however, once the item intended to be used as a probe was lifted from the floor and electricity arched over it. He gasped and hastily reached for the wall behind him, making a circular motion with his fingertips. Muttering words that Jocasta could not understand and Dungias recorded, the Living Key closed his eyes, concentrating on the only function of MajiK he had ever been taught.

  “The name of N’Traljedan is in my database,” Dungias thought, listening to the chants. He directed thought to Alpha which signaled the computer station to add energy emissions to the sound shield so that it would also scramble the transmission of simple MajiKs. “He is often referred to in the texts of the Enacranites. He does not openly participate in the passing of worship and the transmission of KaA, but he is revered as a pioneer and a figure of great power… a living figure, by my recollection. This then is more of an entreaty than a simple spell. This key is either misinformed or a liar; it isn’t masters he should be concerned with, N’Traljedan would know we were opening this door no matter where we chose to access it.”

  The demeanor of the man changed as he made circle after circle, and soon it was clear that he was
not conscious of what he was doing. His eyelids slowly rose, revealing blue fields of light with sparkling purple stars where his eyes should have been. Sparks of the same purple light started to show against the wall at the end of the man’s fingertips and the fabric of the wall slowly twisted away, revealing a slender, winding, stone corridor lit by torches.

  “Normally, a Captain would rally their troops and start down that tunnel.”

  “But?” Dungias asked.

  “I’m not sure how fast we’ll have to move in there,” Jocasta answered. “That leaves you, me and Nulaki. He’s in the bedroom opposite of mine; probably still playing with his new toys. You go and get him, and I’ll keep an eye on our doorman.”

  “As you wish, Captain.”

  “Hey Z,” Jocasta spoke softly, taking hold of Dungias’ arm. “Can you really do all that stuff? Can you map how a spell is cast?”

  “Not even in the slightest,” Dungias whispered.

  “Then what the hell is all this stuff in the room?” she asked, looking around at the machinery and the cables. “You went an awful long way to sell a short con!”

  “Not at all, Captain,” Dungias replied. “All of this is mining equipment.”

  “Mining equipment?”

  “Along the lines of why we are here,” Dungias stated. “You did see the mines when we came up out of the river, yes?”

  “Of course I saw the mines!” she quickly replied.

  “Then you no doubt saw what passed for security at those mines,” Dungias pointed out. “I felt that the only thing we were missing was the necessary equipment to extract stones from that mine.”

  “Just go get our resident bug, y’damn pirate!”

  “I swear, you guys find all the good stuff!” Nulaki said the moment he entered the room. He was still getting used to his new weapons belt and the upgrades Dungias had given him. He had thought it was the perfect distraction – exactly what he needed to see him through until sunrise. Now he had another distraction, and one that was even sweeter. Without any suggestions from either Dungias or Jocasta, he stepped into the portal and started down the pathway.

  Jocasta grinned, readying herself to follow the thief. “I figured if someone went through all of this trouble to hide things away, the pathway up to it might be–”

  “Booby-trapped,” Nulaki said, pointing at the floor. He climbed up the wall and proceeded down the path about ten meters before returning to the ground.

  “Allow me, Captain,” Dungias said. Touching his hand to Alpha, Jocasta, Dungias, and the quivering key floated above the floor until they reached the same point where Nulaki had touched down.

  “Regular projectile,” Jocasta said as she drew her shoulder holstered gun. After the tell-tale beeping, she fired twice into the wall where they had touched down. The stone chipped, effectively making a marker. “Rapid fire,” she said before quickly putting away the weapon.

  “By the way, Z, how cutting is that door to the personal satchel?”

  “Oooh, good question!” Nulaki remarked.

  “At its maximum intensity, it requires quadruple the power, and the settings need to be made before the net-portal leaves the gloves,” Dungias explained. “It would be sharper than a mono-filament weapon, either cutting the intended target or causing the portal to fail.”

  “And an even better answer,” Nulaki whispered. “Why is it I can see a lot of heads in the Captain’s keep?!”

  “Would be a nice way to rack up on bounties,” Jocasta added, also choosing to speak softly. “A dead target and all the proof you need in one tidy head-swipe.” Nulaki looked back at Jocasta with a twisted face as the intended joke was met with a very cold observation. “Mind on your work!” she directed.

  The corridor twisted onward for another two traps and three hundred meters, opening out onto a large platform-like area of sandy ground, a set of double doors standing five meters tall. Dungias’ brow twitched. Something in his immediate vicinity was changing and rapidly. He was still a Traveler, but at the moment he and the others were hunters, seeking a prey that could just as easily hunt and kill. The wary hunter, who knew he was also potential prey, needed to be downwind and in foliage if at all possible. There was only one item that could see to that metaphor. Dungias put his hand to Alpha and drew it, extending it over Jocasta’s shoulder to touch Nulaki’s back. “Activate your stealth field, Scarab!” As Nulaki activated the device, Dungias added to its power output to cover all four bodies.

  Jocasta wanted to inquire what her First Mate was doing, and there was good reason to believe that Nulaki was going to beat her to the punch, but the sound of glass breaking all but petrified the two of them. Their minds raced to access their personal repertoire of responses to unexpected events, and they readied their bodies for the initiation of reaction. Nulaki was ready to move – to use his speed and agility to make himself a hard-to-hit target. Jocasta’s hand was on her blaster and she was ready to draw and fire at a target.

  Just over the doors, an enormous circlet flared with the light of MannA. Inside the circle, a gigantic eye opened. It resembled the human organ, with a black pupil, but it quickly turned all white as it cast light into the area, covering everything from the pathway to the point where the four were standing. While the light remained steady, the pupil of the eye returned and moved around, as if it was checking the walls, the corners, and the ceiling. It then looked at the ground. And Nulaki closed his eyes, realizing that while they could not be seen, the ground here was soft and sandy… there would be footprints! When the eyes stopped moving, the Black Scarab could tell it was looking at the trail the four bodies had made. The pupil changed to red and Nulaki could see commands going into his brace-com and changing the harmonics of the stealth field. The white light turned red, but the eye still could not see them. The pupil then changed to purple. Again Dungias entered commands on Nulaki’s brace-com. The ultraviolet light failed just as the infrared had. The pupil then turned green and Nulaki’s eyes squinted.

  “Persistent bastard!” he whispered, touching his hand to his belt before throwing a shuriken as hard as he could. The weapon gave a fluttering song as it ascended and lodged into the wall, shattering a section of the circlet. There was a low wailing moan as the eye quickly faded.

  “Nice shot!” Jocasta exclaimed. “Had some experience dealing with MajiK?”

  “It’s an occupational hazard,” Nulaki smiled as he turned to look at Dungias. “That was a neat trick. I didn’t know you could access my brace-com, though.”

  “You are entitled to think whatever you wish,” Dungias said as he slid Alpha back into its sleeve. Jocasta snickered as she moved toward the doors. Bolts and catches locked into place, echoing throughout the chamber. The doors flashed with white light for a moment, fading out of sight, but gave a soft humming noise that made Jocasta stop.

  “Allow me, Captain,” Dungias said as he advanced.

  “Uh, Z, that’s definitely a MajiK trap,” Nulaki advised. “… which is where I draw the line.” Dungias did not slow and took Alpha out once more.

  “We might want to stand back,” Jocasta warned as she moved back from the doors.

  “Just what is that thing?” Nulaki asked.

  “Crapstacks! You’re just getting around to asking?!” Jocasta snapped before shaking her head. “He calls it an Osamu. I call it the Divine Hangnail! As far as I know, neither one of us is right, but I’m closer to the truth!”

  Dungias twirled Alpha for a moment, looking at the doors and even more at the energy he could feel just in front of them. He stopped, took in a deep breath, focused himself, and then placed his empty hand against the door. The electricity of the trap flowed into his body and into Alpha who stood ready to release the charge, but it chose not to once it understood the voltage of the trap was low; only the amperage was high, and therefore easily absorbed. A total of seven blasts flowed through Dungias into Alpha which only gave a soft glow on the final charge. Dungias stepped away from the doors, twirled Alpha again,
and touched the end to the doors. A manipulation of gravity, on the molecular level, caused the center of the left door to crack and shatter. Dungias gave one last fanfare of Alpha before sheathing his creation.

  “See what I mean?” Jocasta said softly as she grabbed the living key. “Come on, key man, you first.”

  “Why me?” the man asked as he was pushed forward.

  “Cuz I’m not gonna weep if you don’t make it back!” With another shove, the Living Key pushed against the doors and was surprised at how they responded to his touch. He could hear the metal grinding against the stone floor… the doors sounded heavy… but it took next to no effort for him to get them to move.

  “You are distressed, Key,” a voice called to the man, reacting to his touch and the man jumped at the sensation of the connection that was made.

  “What is it?” Jocasta asked.

  “The doors,” the round man quickly replied. “They are so cold to the touch!”

  “I hear death’s colder,” Jocasta replied. “Open them already!”

  “None of the Makers are with you, Key,” the voice stated. “Only you can hear us, Disciple. Give us your thoughts and we will respond accordingly.”

  “Thieves force my hand, servants of my Masters,” the Living Key thought, allowing a smile to curl at the edges of his mouth. He put more effort into opening the doors and with one push they swung wide. “Destroy them!” Stumbling forward, the Living Key straightened his face as Dungias took hold of his shoulder and pulled him over to the left side of the entrance. Nulaki and Jocasta entered through the middle of the archway and looked around.

  Jocasta was a moment away from having her goggles form when the torches of the room ignited all at once. Suddenly, she could see that the cut whitestone bricks and sandstone mortar had been finely stacked and laid, making for very solid walls, floor and ceiling. For such large doors, she was slightly surprised by the size of the chamber. Just over fifteen meters tall, seventy-two meters wide, and eighty-five meters deep; it was sizeable, but she had been entertaining something more substantial in her mind. The floor was not covered with coins and jewelry. Everything was clean and orderly; there was not even any dust she could see. She looked over at the Key who suddenly seemed less afraid to be in Dungias’ grip and that did not set well with her. As much as she wanted to take another step, she did not, setting her eyes on the centerpiece of the room instead.