Return to Bermudas Index
by wordboy
Aeryn fired again into the mob and dragged Jool around a corner. “Move! Or don’t your people know how to run, either?”
Jool winced and did her best to keep up with Aeryn. “What the frell are they? They’re dressed like Peacekeepers, but…”
“Questions later.” Aeryn slapped her comm. “John? John, can you hear me?” When all she heard was silence from the small comm, Aeryn cursed. “John’s right. Nothing is ever easy. Look out!”
One of the beings dropped down from overhead behind Jool. She turned, saw the creature and screamed. Aeryn winced as the sound pierced her skull and made her feel like her teeth were about to be vibrated from her head. Quickly, Aeryn raised her pistol and shot the creature. Jool, however, continued screaming.
“Will you shut the frell up? You’re not helping!” Aeryn looked around quickly, trying to get her bearings. “Come on. We should be able to circle around and try to get back to John and Antandra.”
Jool moved closer to Aeryn and tried to look in every direction at once. “If they’ve run into the same creatures we have…”
“They’re all right. And we’ll find them. Now go!”
Aeryn slowed as she approached another intersection. She was sure she heard footsteps coming toward them, and didn’t want to run headlong into another mob. Aeryn held up a hand to stop Jool, hesitated a microt, then rounded the corner, pistol raised.
Four Peacekeepers stood on the other side of the corner, pulse rifles ready to fire. The one in the lead relaxed slightly. “Who are you,” he said.
Aeryn relaxed only slightly. “We’re from…another Leviathan. We picked up your distress beacon and came over to see if we could help.” Though she kept her face calm, Aeryn felt her heart begin to race, uncertain of how the Peacekeepers would react.
The officer in the lead looked grim. “You would have been better off staying away. Is it just the two of you?”
“No, there are also a man and a woman…”
“They must be the ones Lieutenant Biranda went after,” one of the others said.
The lead officer nodded. He turned suddenly when the sound of the mob got closer. “I’m Officer Myden Bora. Follow us.”
Aeryn exchanged a quick look with Jool and followed Bora.
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“Now, you say you come from another Leviathan?” The Peacekeeper lieutenant, Biranda, paced around Command. “How did you know we were here?” The Lieutenant was not a tall man; his head barely came up to John’s shoulder.
“We picked up your distress beacon, Lieutenant. We were close, so we thought we’d see if we could help.” John watched Biranda and tried to maintain an air of bored indifference. “Our Leviathan was anxious to get out here and help.”
Biranda nodded slowly. “Yes, Leviathans are always eager to help one another. So who are you?”
Before John could answer, two groups entered Command. The first was a group of Peacekeepers surrounding Aeryn and Jool. The other was a pair of techs, waving scanning devices and looking confused.
Biranda watched Aeryn and Jool join John and Antandra on one side of Command. “Where did you find them?”
“Tier Six, sir. They were trying to stay ahead of the mob.”
John watched them, then turned to Antandra. She was frowning, her head turned slightly to one side. “What’s the matter,” he whispered.
“Parsifal’s picking up some kind of temporal energy onboard this Leviathan. He thinks it may be what interfered with my trip.” Antandra watched the techs approach her. “Something wrong?”
Rather than reply, the techs continued to study their instruments. “It’s her. Without question.”
Biranda approached slowly. “Nikas?”
The tech looked up from her scanner, her eyes wide and anxious. “We were running routine scans on local timespace, trying to determine what happened to when the generator was activated. Our sensors picked up a minor source of temporal energy here in Command.” She gestured at Antandra. “It’s her.”
“Really.” Biranda approached slowly, and John tried not to chuckle as the Lieutenant was forced to look up at Antandra. “What’s your name?”
Antandra’s voice was calm and unconcerned. “My name is Antandra Pandora.”
“That’s an odd name for a Sebacean.”
“I’m not Sebacean.” Out of the corner of her eye, Antandra saw John wince, and wondered what the problem was.
“You’re not Sebacean? Then what are you?” Biranda shook his head quickly. “No, forget about that. What do you know about time travel?”
“Me, personally? Nothing. I just use the system. The techs back home operate it.”
There was a look of disbelief on Nikas’s face. “Surely you must know something about the system’s operation.”
Antandra shook her head. “The techs activate the Arch, the traveler walks through it and then you come out where and when you want to be. It would be easier for me to explain how my sidearm works.”
Biranda chewed his lower lip. “Bring them to the lab.”
Eagerly, the two techs took Antandra’s arms and lead her from Command. John watched then started walking as the guards nudged him, Aeryn and Jool forward.
“Are you two all right?”
Aeryn glanced back at the guards. “Fine, all things considered.”
Jool almost started screaming. “Fine? We get chased through this frelling ship and nearly killed by a bunch of degenerate Peacekeepers, and you say we’re fine?”
“Look on the bright side,” John said. “Given the way things usually go on Moya, this is actually not all that bad.”
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John, Aeryn and Jool were lead to the Central Chamber, where a lab had been set up. A large, roughly cylindrical construct filled the center of the chamber, surrounded by consoles manned by techs. A pair of posts had been set up on one side of the chamber. Nikas and the other tech stood Antandra between them, then turned their attention to a secondary console.
“It’s just a scanning rig,” Nikas said. “It won’t hurt.”
“Oh, I’m not concerned about that,” Antandra said.
Biranda watched them for a microt. “Well?”
Nikas watched information stream across a screen. “She’s right. She’s not Sebacean. As a matter of fact, Rhianda’s data stores don’t have a record of her species.” She tapped in more instructions and watched the data change. “There seems to be a field of temporal energy surrounding her. It’s a very low level field, and it seems to be focused on her forearm.”
Antandra raised her right arm and touched a spot just below her wrist. “It’s a temporal beacon. It’s the only way the control center can keep track of travelers. Hopefully they’ll be able to lock onto this and get me the hell out of here.”
“Really? And where might that control center be located?”
“Earth.”
Biranda frowned. “Erp? Never heard of it. Were you traveling through your time travel system approximately six arns ago?”
Antandra thought quickly. “There is no sense of time while traveling through the Arch. However, I did arrive on Moya about four arns ago.”
The frown on Biranda’s face grew. “Moya? Why is that name familiar?” He thought for a microt, then shook his head. “It’ll come to me. So you were using your travel system and ended up onboard their Leviathan. Nikas, could she have been using her system at the same time you were activating the temporal generator?”
“It is possible, Lieutenant. And it’s also possible that the interaction between her system and ours could have overloaded both systems. I just wish we had known that someone else was studying time travel.”
Antandra shrugged. “I don’t think that would help you. I’m from the future.”
“Commander! Officer Sun!”
Aeryn felt herself relax when she heard Pilot’s voice. “Yes, Pilot.”
“Whatever is affecting local space is getting worse. The messages are coming in at an even slower rate than before.”
“Great,” John muttered. “Pilot, see if you can determine how far the effect reaches.” In response to Biranda’s questioning look, he said, “That was our pilot. Four of our crew are off the ship. He’s receiving a signal from their transport pod, but it’s coming in slow motion, like time is moving at a different rate for them. Or for us, depending on how you want to look at it.”
Aeryn massaged her eyes. “Pilot, can you tell how far the affect reaches?”
“No, Officer Sun. But I will see if I can find its limits.”
John chewed on his lower lip. “What were you doing out here? Some kind of experiment in time travel that went wrong?”
“Nothing has gone wrong!” Biranda sounded both insulted and defiant.
“Dude, you’ve got a dead pilot, a Leviathan that looks like it’s been through a war, skeletons all over the ship, and a mob that looks like they could’ve been extras in Night Of The Living Dead. Add to that a stranded time traveler and the fact that, somehow, time in local space has started moving at a different rate than the rest of the universe. If this isn’t the definition of something going wrong, I don’t know what is.”
Nikas glanced at Biranda, then walked up to John. “Our chief scientist theorized that time travel was possible, using warps in the fabric of space known as wormholes. High Command thought the project had merit and set us up here, onboard Rhianda, to conduct the research.”
“So what went wrong?”
“For a time, everything went well. Our theories were sound, and there were no problems during the construction of the temporal generator. However, when we activated the generator, six arns ago, we experienced a massive discharge that killed some of the crew and caused others to revert to a more animalistic phase. It also killed our pilot and rendered Rhianda unconscious. We’ve been trying to correct the situation since then.”
“Enough!” Biranda looked annoyed. “Take them to a cell, while I decide what to do with them.”
Nikas waved a hand at Antandra. “Lieutenant, at least leave this one here. She could be some help to us.”
“She’s already told us that she doesn’t know how her system works. I don’t see how she can help.” Biranda nodded at the guards.
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Aeryn watched the guards lay out their equipment on a table just outside the cell door, then turned back to John and Antandra. There was concentration on John’s face, the same look he wore whenever he was trying to figure out some problem. Antandra’s face was blank. Jool was sitting in a corner, her knees drawn up to her chin.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have come,” John said.
“I think I said that,” Jool muttered.
“As if we had a choice. Even if we had said no, Moya would have gone anyway. I think Pilot was just being courteous when he told us about the beacon.” Aeryn watched Antandra stand and walk to the door. “What’s the matter?”
Antandra stared at her sword and sighed in resignation. “I wish I had my sword. We’d be out of her by now.”
“Your sword wouldn’t have much affect on these bars.”
“Aeryn, I saw that blade cut through the deck and three conduits.” John joined them at the door. “How can it do that, anyway?”
“There’s a small generator built into the hilt. It sets up a vibration along the edge that increases the cutting ability of the blade. The blade itself is made of the same material as the armored hulls of our orbital stations. The blade will cut through most anything, except for another blade.”
John leaned against the wall and stared through the bars down the corridor. In the distance, he could hear the mob and gunfire. “Times like this, I wish I’d listened to my mother.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t listening.”
Despite herself, Aeryn smiled. They exchanged concerned looks, then sat on the floor, their backs to each other. Antandra watched them, then nodded. They were watching both sides of the corridor, essentially watching each other’s back. She stepped away from them and tried to force herself to stay calm.
She wasn’t expecting the deck beneath her feet to suddenly shudder and heave.
