Chapter 30
Carson Blake
He had her in his arms, and he could feel how violently she was shaking.
It was agonizing to watch; he just couldn't do anything to help her.
She kept repeating that something was wrong, but he had no idea what it was.
Then he heard it.
The rumble.
For a split second, he wondered whether it was an earthquake. Then he understood what it was.
And he froze.
A ship.
A large ship was landing on the surface of the planet above. And, if he was any judge, it was close, damn close, quite possibly exactly above this hollowed out, cavernous room.
He stiffened.
Could it be the United Galactic Coalition? Had Admiral Forest already sent reinforcements?
There was one way to find out.
His scanner.
He'd picked it up several minutes ago when he'd found it at the bottom of that mysterious stairwell.
True to its design, it was still working. Okay, so it had several scratches and a big dent in its side, but it could function. And right now, he brought it out of the magnetic holster on his hip and stared at it.
If the ship above was Coalition, it would be sending out a standard Coalition greeting on all frequencies.
He would also be able to pick up a specific energy signature that all Coalition vessels had.
?.
The ship above was not Coalition.
His heart sank, faster than a bullet shot from a gun.
He jerked his head up. "We need to leave," he snapped.
She stared at him, her mouth open, but no words coming out.
"Nida," he hissed again, "it's the Barbarians," he said the word, but his voice shook like a child's as he did.
Though his scanner was small, and couldn't penetrate too far above to the planet's surface, the readings it managed to relay confirmed one terrible fact.
There was a Barbarian ship parked right above them.
"We have to do this now," he whispered again, his voice barely registering above a tight breath, "release the entity. We have to leave."
Nida didn't appear capable of understanding him. She simply stood there, staring past his right shoulder and up at the crumbling statue.
He shifted his hands around until they were placed heavily on her shoulders. "Nida," he gave her a little shake. "Please."
That word seemed to wake her, and she finally looked at him. "This is the wrong time," she said simply.
It was such a strange statement considering the circumstances, and he gave a bitter, harsh laugh. "Yes it is, but we can't exactly go up there and tell the Barbarians to wait."
She shook her head, staring at him with a dull gaze that told him the entity was half in control. "This is the wrong time," she spoke each word slowly as if every syllable had the import of a magic spell or incantation.
He went to say that he understood, but he stopped.
Because maybe he didn't.
There was something about the quality of her gaze and that terrible certainty shaking through her words.
"Nida?" he whispered.
"We have arrived at the wrong time," the entity said.
"What do you mean the wrong time?" he asked breathily. Though he was hardly running around engaging in combat, he felt winded. He stood there, panting, still holding her shoulders, trying to understand what was happening here.
"Space-time has distorted. We are trapped," the entity said.
His hands fell away from her shoulders. "What do you mean?"
The entity stepped forward. Or rather, it forced Nida's body to step forward. As he was standing right there in front of her, she simply pressed into him. Then she brought a hand up and placed it flat on his chest.
Before he could shift back, he felt something.
And then he saw it.
Flashes of a vision.
The planet around them, the statue, and a strange, impossible sight of stars compressing down into a single point.
So much information was relayed to him at that moment that he simply couldn't comprehend it.
Then she shifted back.
She took her palm from his chest and let her arm drop to her side.
"What was that?" He clutched at his armor, dragging his fingers across the strong, cold plating. "What was that?"
"We are running out of time," the entity said.
At that admission, Carson glanced up.
The ceiling of the room was shaking, and fine particles of dust were drifting down. They covered his boots, alighted on his shoulders, and several landed on his upturned cheeks and lips. He brushed them off. Then he snapped his gaze back to her. "Tell me how to free you," he spoke only to the entity now. "Tell me where you have to go. I will take you there."
"I am not from your space-time."
"Not from my space time?? Do you mean dimension?" he spluttered.
Nida appeared to consider him. "Yes, dimension. I am not from this realm," she brought up her hands and considered the light racing across them. "We are from a dimension close to your own. Too close. Sometimes one leaks into the other. That is how I have come to be here. But I cannot stay," the entity returned Nida's gaze to him, and deep in her blue-lit eyes, he saw an even more powerful burst of light. "If I stay here, I will destroy myself and I will destroy others with me. I must go home."
"How do we get you home?"
"This planet is a bridge. It is a point that aligns with my dimension. At certain times, it forms a bridge between our worlds."
Carson nodded, though he was having trouble keeping up. Other dimensions? Bridges between worlds? This sounded a lot more like the plot of a particularly unscientific holographic movie, and less like reality.
But he didn't dare interrupt.
"To return home, I must go to a time when the bridge is active."
Carson took a breath. He could understand that??kind of. Then he abruptly shook his head. What was he thinking? Was the entity suggesting time travel?
"We must find a bridge," the entity continued.
"Okay, but how do we do that?" Do we just wait here??for one to form?"
The entity shook Nida's head. "Remus 12 has unstable time," it answered cryptically.
"What does that mean?"
He wanted to know everything the entity had to say, but, for the love of god, Barbarians had landed on the planet. He had no idea how long it would take them to find this room. They couldn't stay here.
Just as that realization formed, Nida put up a hand. "We are safe in this room for now," she answered as if she could read his mind.
"Fine, but what do we do now?" he asked through a pressured hiss.
"We must find a time gate and travel to another point in Remus 12's history," the entity announced.
Carson just looked at her. Slowly. Because what she'd just said made absolutely no sense.
"We must continue to use the time gates of Remus 12 to search for a bridge to my dimension."
?.
"Sorry, what?" Carson wiped a hand across his mouth. He'd been on his fair share of strange missions - space wasn't a simple place, after all - but what the entity was suggesting was insane.
Time travel simply wasn't possible.
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 toward 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 marvelous technologies, he saw its people, and then he saw the war that ended it all. A terri
ble 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 in 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 realized 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's one in these tunnels." The entity said. Then it turned Nida around, and she walked with strange, jarring steps toward the opposite side of the room. Together they traveled 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 armor.
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 toward 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 toward 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 skeptical 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.