Lokians 1: Beyond the End of the World (36 page)

“
Roger that,” O’Hara said.

“
Okay…so…are we all set, Captain,” Day
asked.

“
Admiral Lay? Captain O’Hara. Copy?” he
called into his comm. link.

“
Go ahead, Captain.”

“
We’re set to go. Do we have
clearance?”

“
Clear on my end. Good luck, Captain.
Lay, out.”

“
He’s so chipper,” Fitzpatrick
joked.

“
We’re set, Miss Day. Power the
propulsion systems,” the captain ordered.

“
Roger.”

“
O’Hara to ground crew, unseal the
hangar door.”

“
The door is open, Captain. You may
proceed,” a soldier answered.

Day hovered out of the hangar. Flying the
Lokian was just like Mittens, if a little less responsive, more
stiff. She saw the scientists and military officials gazing.
Finally, she reached so high, the hangar was but a speck.

Beyond Eon, and completely out of the Gemini
system—a ploy to create a safe distance from the effects of the
space-time puncture—Day engaged the subatomic, condenser organ,
causing the surrounding space-time continuum to collapse into
itself. As soon as the hole was punched, the ship was inevitably
sucked into a void.

Readings registered as flashes of glowing
symbols, shapes of impossible designs, and colors without names.
Simultaneously, readings on the monitor suggested the Lokian
automatically sealed the area behind the entry point like a spider
plugs holes with webbing, only there were no physical means at
work.

“
What is this?” Day
muttered.

Everyone was equally bewildered; the
monitor’s display broke down into blips, dots, little more than
waves and sounds. They cast glances at each other, then Day.

“
Holding up,” the captain
yelled.

In response, she gave a thumbs up. Grunting,
she was trying to regulate speed, but in subspace, speed had no
meaning; the ship simply went, as guided by the antennae, wherever
the surrounding reality pushed it, or pulled it, as coming and
going also held no meaning. To her, the membranes swirling around
were chaotic, infinite tubes interconnected to infinitely more
tubes. Although there were no tubes—only oscillations of energy,
which rendered navigation impossible—their destination was a point
of origin, so no guiding hands were required.

“
Oh, my God,” she whispered over and
over. “Entering subspace is strange. Each dimension is a sort of
doorway, and subspace is like…like a giant hotel or something. We
all enter into the same tube because we’re entering from the same
dimension regardless of where in that dimension we are… or were….
So weird.”

“
What tubes?” Adams asked with furrowed
brow.

“
Apparently masters of
inter-dimensional travel can enter subspace from various dimensions
and invariably different tubes.”

“
That really doesn’t answer the
question,” Franklin muttered.

“
I don’t know—the damn tubes—you have
to see what I see!”

“
Yeesh….”

Laughing, O’Hara stated she was probably
having a hard time working the ship and paying attention to them
wasn’t her priority. The agents shrugged. As much as Day wanted to
explain what she was seeing, it was simply ineffable.

With his back to the wall, and his arms
crossed over his chest, O’Hara maintained an askance view of his
helmsman, but his mind was wandering. Then, finally, something
cleared up. He understood the explanation given by the traveler
when they first met.

O’Hara knew that everyone he had met, every
step he took, every decision he made led to their current outcome.
He also understood the Lokians were not just a galactic threat, but
a threat to every dimension, every, possible, reality existing
separately or unified, because they were located in subspace; they
weren’t creatures of a single dimension, space, or time, which
meant carrying out his plan to destroy the Lokians affected
everything.

Logically, there must be some universe,
some dimension, out there negatively impacted by the destruction of
the Lokians. It doesn’t matter, though,
he thought.
Every
choice I’ve made has led me to this one. No second guessing…there
really is no choice; I’m just here to act.

“
Captain,” DeReaux asked.

“
What?”

“
She’s starting.”

“
Running systems cover, Captain,” Day
stated.

It was a program to disguise all other
programs, except the original, Lokian runtimes. After that, she
released a signal, indicating the ship had found a civilization.
Since data transfer between Lokians was instantaneous, as soon as
she fired off her message, she received transmissions from
headquarters.

“
Whoa, they’re fast,” she
whispered.

“
What is it,” O’Hara asked.

“
Data was downloaded and spread to
surrounding Lokians.”

Many other ships, some of a monstrous
magnitude, traveled from subspace to standard space-time. They
whizzed by Day’s vision, frightening her, but everything was
working out as planned. She allowed the ship to drift a moment.
Suddenly, the transporter lurched. A painful flash of light forced
from her a cry.

“
What happened?” O’Hara yelled in
darkness.

Everything was out, and the helmsman was
totally disconnected. “Uh…it’s a systems lockout. The ship shut off
life support and pressure,” Day gasped.

The crewmembers scrambled to put on their
headgear. Day groaned, saying she had to relinquish control in
order to put her headgear on. Her lack of communications posed a
problem.

“
We’re blind, Captain,” she
complained.

“
Don’t worry about it…we’ll figure it
out. Get your damned helmet on!”

When they clicked on their gun lights,
DeReaux huffed, “You know these helmets should have headlamps…I
mean, really.”

Slight vertigo brought them a sense of
disorientation, but it quickly passed. Then, they were vaulted into
walls, from which they bounced off before floating aimlessly
without gravity. O’Hara closed his eyes and relaxed. He allowed the
situation to unfold, knowing that an opportunity was going to
present itself.

“
Nandesrikahl, access the display
monitor, see if you can understand what’s going on.”

“
Good thinking,” Swain said. “It has
its own power supply, but make it quick.”

Nandesrikahl propelled himself off a beam,
reaching the display. “Let’s see, here,” he huffed impatiently. The
monitor just warbled incomprehensibly. “It’s…uh. One second,” He
grew quiet. A portentous series of hisses and clicks were embedded
behind the data. Nandesrikahl heard the Lokian runtimes and
attempted to translate. “We have hard dock, Captain,” he said,
surprised.

“
What? How,” Day inquired.

“
We were hit by a tractor beam of
sorts. Shhh.”

There was a moment of silence. Nandy’s gun
light was rolling about; the rifle strapped to his shoulder was
free floating. When he didn’t say anything, the captain
whispered.

“
Can we access the airlock and step
onto the queen’s quarters?”

“
I have to ask for permission,”
Nandesrikahl whispered back.

“
How? Day’s lost the
connection.”

“
Irrelevant, Captain,” Swain chimed in.
“Nandy can route runtimes through the nanobots, which essentially
are the ship’s awareness.”

“
Can you ask permission without giving
away what we’re doing?”

“
I think so,” Nandesrikahl
responded.

He then translated the program into English
before feeding a request back to the computer, which in turn was
translated into Lokian. Information went through the nanobots,
which carried the Intel along with the creature’s neurons straight
to the queen. Nandesrikahl also stated an anomaly in the ship’s
programming was causing it to perform certain actions outside the
norm. One of those actions just happened to unseal the airlock. The
queen attempted lockout of all base functions, momentarily killing
the Lokian ship.

“
I’ve tricked it. Wait,” Nandesrikahl
stopped as he listened. “Okay, it’s working as predicted. She’s
starting a scan. Now, yes, the circuit program will engage, causing
an infinite loop. That’ll buy us some time, but we have to
move.”

“
You heard ‘im,” O’Hara said. “Let’s
go!”

Chapter Twenty Seven

While the queen was busy with an endless loop
of nonsense, the crew took a moment they desperately needed to step
out of the airlock. All eight men and women stared aghast at an
enormous hangar, which although alighted by amber luminescence,
seemed to span on indefinitely. The airlock then shut behind them
with an echo.

“
Fuuuck,” Fitzpatrick
breathed.

“
Yeah. Just as a heads up, we might not
be able to get back on board after we’re done,” O’Hara said as he
ran his hand over a bulbous, barrier of chitin.

While there was no gravity, there was an
external pressure pounding the crew from every direction. It
allowed them to walk with little difficulty, though it was
disorienting.

“
Hmm, like being underwater,” Swain
commented.

Adams and Franklin carried the charges on
their backs while Day and DeReaux took the rear. The captain eyed
his photon rifle, silently wishing its firepower was
sufficient.

“
Hold up, guys,” Fitzpatrick
whispered.

She closed her eyes, mentally scanning their
surroundings. Her deep and regulated breaths sounded into
everyone’s earpiece. As she focused, she saw what everyone else
did, a dimly lit, interminable, empty space. The walls were
exoskeleton, and the framework was a bony white. Mesh-like tubes
lined the ceiling, pulsating subtle radiance.

Fitzpatrick then moved in her bodiless state.
The hangar was filled with unknown boxes and canisters. They, too,
were insect-like in their appearance with exo-skeletal bands.

“
Okay, I don’t see any threats,”
returning to a normal state, she heaved.

The rest of the crew was able to check the
comm. units for directions. The course had been uploaded to their
wrist apparatuses when the captain first pieced together the
plan.

“
Move forward, hugging the wall to our
left for three hundred yards. Then, take the first hall on the
left,” O’Hara ordered.

He and Swain took the lead with Fitzpatrick
flanking their right. They moved quickly, boots clanking over the
hard ground. The sounds were somehow distorted, elongated. O’Hara
came to a halt as he peered down the hall.

“
Fitzpatrick,” he asked.

Following a scan, she said they were clear.
O’Hara motioned with his hand to move. Down the juncture, the
corridor narrowed, forcing them into a crouched position. O’Hara
checked his map display.

“
About another two hundred feet
forward. Then drop down a twenty foot pipe.”

He looked over to Fitzpatrick who nodded. She
proceeded to use her skill to move through the floor beneath them.
There, she saw another corridor running parallel to the one they
were in.

“
Clear.”

The adrenaline was coursing through their
bodies. They grit their teeth, clenched their jaws, and stared into
the darkness with wide eyes before duck walking to the dropdown.
When O’Hara landed, he looked forwards and backwards.

“
Clear,” he grunted. One-by-one, they
all dropped down. “Next, we move in the opposite direction forty
feet to a small compartment.” It slowly dawned on him that the home
world was a living beast and the queen was part of it.
Maybe the
heart or brain
, O’Hara thought. “Move out.”

At the end of the hike, they reached a hatch
with a spiraling pattern of chitin. O’Hara and Swain stood on
opposite ends. Fitzpatrick yoked it open, and they filed in at
angles while DeReaux covered their center. Beams of light
crisscrossed as they took their posts.

The next door was a mere twelve feet away.
The size of the rooms and halls indicated that no large Lokians
traversed the area, but they had to be on lookout for smaller
scouts or repair drones, or whatever oddities Lokians had. Swain
spotted several holes in the walls along the ceiling as he ran his
light over the entire room.

“
Captain, those little, football things
might run throughout this place.”

“
Copy. Keep your eyes
peeled.”

The crew halted for a moment, awaiting
orders. O’Hara looked to Fitzpatrick. She knew he was wondering
what was on the other side of the door. A second later, she told
them it was pitch black.

“
Roger that. We’ll do this the old
fashioned way,” he replied.

He and Swain took opposing ends of the door.
The captain then nodded to Fitzpatrick. She reached for the door,
but there was nothing to grab. Adams told her to touch it, and when
she did, it fanned open with a hiss. Again, they moved in at
angles.

The spec ops team pressed beyond more halls,
through hatches, and into more rooms, creeping towards their final
destination. Suddenly, the whole place lit up bright green.

“
We’re found! Nobody panic, just move,”
the captain ordered.

DeReaux spun backwards with eyes peeled for a
rear assault. They heard a loud buzzing reverberating along the
walls. An enormous, wasp-like creature burst through the hatch. The
sniper sniffed once, focused his eyes, and took a knee. Not only
did the buzzing slow, the Lokian practically halted, each wing
sparkling green, and moving upwards and downwards; it was
beautiful. He fired a clean shot between antennae.