Linkage: The Narrows of Time (41 page)

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.

“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.