Invaders: The Chronowarp Page 10

  The void!

  Could the vision have been the method of Polarion travel between the stars? That was a crazy idea. Yet, it almost seemed, at that point, as if I could understand some of the words.

  I listened intently. In the vision, I leaned toward the bulky, rounded device. As I did that, the vision abruptly stopped.

  I opened my eyes, staring at the bulky, rounded machine before me.

  I closed my eyes again to learn more. Nothing happened, though. I lifted the circuit off my head and then set it back down on my head. I expected the visions to begin again.

  They did not.

  I tried a third time, and shouted as a shock of pain zapped my head. I flung the circuit from me.

  I gathered that it wasn’t going to work for me anymore.

  I scrambled out of the chair, looking around.

  “Why don’t you just come and talk to me?” I shouted. “Why go through all this rigmarole?”

  There was silence.

  I heaved a sigh, picked up the circuit and put it back into the slot. The opening closed. I searched, but there wasn’t even a thumbprint lock anymore.

  This was frustrating. Was Argon alive? Were other Polarions watching me? Was this an automated thing, or did some ancient Polarion computer run the installation?

  I had tons of questions but no answers.

  I sat on the chair, but that did nothing. I got up, looked around…

  There was something about one point in the wall that seemed different from before. I approached—

  That part of the wall slid up, revealing a new corridor. I looked down the corridor. Should I go down it, or should I pick up the pole at the end of the former corridor and try to batter my way back to Jenna?

  In the end, I entered the new corridor.

  -25-

  In the interest of time, I’ll narrow down the process to this: I eventually found a vehicle of sorts. I did not find food, water or any kind of weapons. Even in this part of the alien base, the chambers and corridors were abnormally bare.

  If the base was thousands of years old, as the Eshom had suggested by its millennia of imprisonment, shouldn’t I have found some skeletons? Shouldn’t there be moldy clothes or other equipment lying around? Why was the base spotless? Why was the air so breathable?

  I hadn’t found an air-purifying system. There was no evidence of stirring air.

  In any case, I found a large vehicle there. It was silver, smooth, without any visible door-handles or other entrance points. It was twice the size of a Chevy Tahoe, without tires or tracks, but having something that resembled a two-way mirror in front, slanting like the windshield on an old Corvette.

  I walked around the vehicle, ran my hands over it.

  It clicked suddenly, and a section lifted like a wing on a bird. I peered within. It had a small area in back with chairs and counters, an entrance to the front and two seats up there. I could see out the two-way mirror window.

  With a shrug, I entered the vehicle, found a switch, pressed it, and the door closed with snap.

  I moved to what appeared to be the driver’s side. There were buttons. I pressed them one by one experimentally.

  To my delight, the vehicle purred into life. This was getting better and better.

  Now began an intense time as I practiced using the vehicle. I rammed into the wall almost right away. Crumpling sounds made me wince. I could wreck this newfound vehicle if I wasn’t careful.

  I experimented more carefully after that.

  At one point, a vehicle-sized slot opened before me.

  I dragged a sleeve across my forehead. Did I dare?

  I uttered a profanity and drove the air vehicle into the opening. Everything happened fast after that. A force propelled my vehicle down a tube. That slammed me against the seat.

  There were restraints, but I hadn’t buckled in. I began sliding out the side. I gripped the tiny steering wheel-like object. That caused the vehicle to swerve in the tight tube. I slammed against the wall, jerked the tiny wheel and slammed against the other wall.

  I shouted in frustration as a screeching sound and more crumpling told me this could be—

  A slot opened before me and the vehicle shot into the freezing Arctic Ocean underwater.

  Groaning sounds erupted all around me. Water hosed into the compartment.

  With intense concentration, I worked on piloting the vehicle. I wanted to head for the shaft that led up. I figured I only had minutes before this thing flooded. Instead, I maneuvered down. By this time, I’d figured out how to move faster and slower.

  The water poured into the compartment, and the walls around me groaned with complaint. Even so, I maneuvered under the alien complex and managed to go up to the pool.

  In seconds, I surfaced, found out how to go up, and smashed against the ceiling.

  “Damn it!” I shouted.

  I reversed and splashed into the pool. I studied the controls as I floated on the surface. Finally, I tried that again, floating in the air and inching toward the dock. I landed on it with a jar.

  I got up, sloshing through water, and opened the wing-like door. Some water poured out. The rest remained.

  I jumped out, waiting by the door. “Jenna!” I shouted. She’d never hear me, though, not with the closed hatch.

  With a sigh, I moved away from the door. It shut fast. I didn’t have the heart to test it. I did look at the vehicle. It had dents and crumpled areas.

  Shaking my head, I went through the hatch, hurrying to find Jenna.

  ***

  I found her in the control chamber. She screamed as I came through the hatch, drawing her gun—

  “Logan!” she shouted. She began running to me, stopped halfway there and holstered the gun. “You came back,” she said.

  “Yeah, I did,” I said. “You can jump into my arms and thank me if you want.”

  The beginning of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. That was it. She nodded, and her eyes welled with tears. She turned away, using a sleeve to dry them. Finally, she regarded me.

  “Did you find another submarine?” she asked.

  “Kind of,” I said. “It’s going to be risky getting out of here, though.”

  “So what? Let’s go.”

  We hurried to the vehicle. She stopped in amazement at the sight of it and then looked at me again. This time, she stepped close and threw her arms around my neck, giving me a painful hug. Afterward, she let go and ran to the vehicle.

  She turned to me again. “How come it’s all beat up?”

  “Birthing pangs,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “I had to learn how to drive it.”

  “You banged it up like this?”

  I went to the vehicle and pressed the spot I thought would open it. Nothing happened.

  “Logan…”

  I tried a few more places and finally found it again. The wing-like door lifted.

  Jenna poked her head inside, saw the water on the floor and stopped once more.

  “It leaks,” I said.

  It took a few seconds before she asked, “How badly?”

  “That’s what we’re about to find out.”

  -26-

  Jenna and I entered the ancient, battered vehicle. She did not like sloshing through the water. She moved to the driver’s seat—

  “The other one,” I said. “That seat’s mine.”

  She gave me a look, but she went to the other seat, sitting down.

  I went to mine. “Buckle up,” I said, showing her how.

  She buckled up and moved her feet through the water. “We’re not going to drown are we?”

  “That’s crazy talk.”

  “This is more than a few drops of water,” she said, heatedly.

  “We have a choice. We can stay here or risk this. Which do you want to try?”

  A few second later, she said, “Okay…whenever you’re ready.”

  I flexed my fingers and began to tap controls. The vehicle purred into life
, we lifted, I turned us around and we floated to the pool.

  “Impressive,” she said, and it sounded like she meant it.

  I hesitated only a moment. Then, I took us down. Instantly, water began hosing into the vehicle.

  “Are you kidding me?” she shouted. “This isn’t a leak. We’re doing to die!”

  “Not if we travel fast enough,” I said. “Hang on.”

  She stared at me as if I were a lunatic. Maybe I was. I didn’t want to die of starvation down here. I’d rather go out trying to escape my doom.

  The vehicle burst out of the underwater pool. I drove fast toward the cavern walls. At the same time, I took us higher. I slowed down for the shaft. That was tense. The water kept hosing in, and I had to maneuver slowly.

  Once we cleared the shaft, though, I aimed the craft toward the surface and pushed the speed.

  Jenna looked around. The water was sloshing at our seats now. “It’s freezing,” she shouted.

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” I said.

  “What about the pack ice?” she said. “We’ll smash against it.”

  I cursed under my breath. I’d forgotten about the pack ice.

  We zoomed upward. Water began lapping against our butts. Our legs were in water. I was shivering. The water pouring in was definitely demoralizing.

  “Look,” she said. “It must be a full moon. I can see through the ice.”

  I debated just trying to hammer through. That seemed like a bad idea, though. We reached the bottom of the pack ice. Water kept pouring in, sloshing around our chests now. My teeth chattered, and it was getting hard to think straight.

  We roared under the ice, searching—

  The water kept rising.

  “Logan,” Jenna said, turning to me. Her skin had already turned blue.

  “Forget this,” I said. I took the vehicle down.

  “What are you doing?”

  Once I thought I’d gone far enough, I aimed back up and began to increase speed.

  “Logan,” she screamed. “To our left, to our left.”

  I slowed down, aimed left, and saw an opening in the ice. We roared up out of the water. I switched on the air-mobile settings and landed on the pack ice second later.

  Unbuckling, shivering and freezing, I waded through the water in the vehicle. I found the door switch, the wing went up, and I gushed outside with the water, propelled onto the freezing pack ice.

  Once the water had drained away, I got up. My teeth were chattering like crazy. I climbed back into the vehicle and went to Jenna.

  She was weeping and shaking her head.

  “We’re alive,” I said.

  She didn’t turn to me. She just wept.

  Finally, I took the vehicle up, heading south for Alaska or Canada, maybe Siberia. I wasn’t sure where. I just wanted to get warm again.

  ***

  Half an hour later, the vehicle bucked.

  “Now what?” Jenna asked.

  “A glitch,” I said.

  The vehicle bucked again, worse than before.

  I looked outside. Ice spread in all directions. We might have reached the tundra. If we landed out here and tried to hoof it the rest of the way, we would die. Thus, I kept flying, increasing speed—

  The vehicle bucked again, and we dropped a hundred feet before it finally leveled out. Jenna hadn’t screamed, but she gripped the underside of her seat with white-knuckled ferocity.

  The next twenty minutes were more of the same. An electrical smell began to trickle into our cabin. It got worse the farther we traveled.

  “What if we crash?” she asked.

  “What if we make it?” I countered.

  Ten minutes later, I saw trees. Soon, we skimmed above a vast pine forest. I belief the correct name was the Taiga, the great northern forest. I didn’t know which country we were in. At this point, I didn’t really care. I just wanted to find people.

  With that in mind…

  “What are you doing?” Jenna said. “You’re taking us up.”

  “To get a closer look at something,” I said.

  The vehicle bucked. Smoke began to pour in, and abruptly, the ancient vehicle stopped purring. Jenna stared at me.

  The cabin lights flickered, went off and we began to nose down, dropping for the pine trees below.

  At that point, Jenna screamed.

  -27-

  Through the two-way mirror window, the great pine forest rushed toward us.

  My seat shook harder than ever, and then it literally dropped through the floor, sliding through a narrow chute. Something popped explosively below, an emergency hatch, I later speculated when I had time to think about it. Then, I ejected from the bottom of the air vehicle. If I hadn’t been buckled in tight, I would have died. I gripped the underside of the falling seat, just as Jenna had been doing earlier, as I plunged toward the snowy landscape. At the same time, the silver vehicle zoomed toward the forest. Fortunately, a giant parachute exploded upward from my chair. I was jerked hard as it inflated, slowing my descent. The seat began to sway gently as it floated toward the forest.

  Farther ahead of me, the silver vehicle smoked. I watched it in the bright moonlight. The vehicle violently struck the earth and exploded with a fiery bloom and a loud detonation.

  That surprised me. I hadn’t expected the Polarion craft—if indeed that was what it had been—to explode like an ordinary plane. The expanding fire engulfed a group of pine trees. They burst into flames like giant torches, roaring as I floated earthward.

  I craned my neck, looking up to see if Jenna’s seat had ejected like mine. I couldn’t see her. So, I concentrated on the looming forest as it rushed up to greet me.

  I made sure my feet were out of the way. My seat barely missed a pine’s outthrust branches. Before I could think about that, my chair struck the ground with considerable force. Fortunately, I’d kept my mouth shut, so I didn’t bite my tongue this time.

  I sat there dazed, hardly believing I’d made it alive and unhurt. I started as Jenna’s chair struck the ground with a decided thud.

  I unbuckled and hurried to her. To my relief, I saw her work her way out from under the fallen parachute. She finally made it, saw me and gave a cry of delight.

  I strode to her, hugged her and picked her up. “We made it,” I shouted.

  She didn’t resist the embrace. I debated kissing her and thought about Debby. Did I still love Debby? I believed I did.

  “Are you going to put me down?” Jenna asked.

  I did, releasing her, but staring at her in the moonlight.

  “We’re alive,” I declared.

  I think it was Winston Churchill who said something to the effect that one of the most wonderful feelings in life was getting shot at and having the bullets miss. We’d just dodged our metaphorical bullet, and it did feel great.

  “We’re alive,” Jenna agreed. “But we’re stranded in the middle of who-knows-where.”

  That was true. Thus, it behooved me to maintain my strength. I looked around, saw a bank of snow and went to it. I scooped up snow, stuffing the cold particles into my mouth.

  “Let the snow melt in your mouth before you swallow it,” Jenna said.

  “Why?” I said around a mouthful of snow.

  “The cold is too much of a shock to your system otherwise. You have to let it warm up first.”

  I wasn’t sure she was right, but I decided to play along. It took longer slaking my thirst this way, but eventually I no longer wanted to drink. Instead, I craved a thick slab of prime rib and a baked potato with everything stuffed inside.

  The pine trees were still burning, but it didn’t look as if the fire would spread. I considered our prospects and realized my boots and socks were soaked. This seemed like a bad place for that.

  “Come on,” I said.

  We waded through snow as we moved nearer the fire. We could hardly dry our footwear near the blazing pines. I stopped Jenna, approached as close as I dared and picked up an independently burnin
g branch. Returning with it, I found some old dried branches and a semi-sheltered spot, and made us our own small controlled fire. After that, I pried some big stones out of the cold earth and set them near the fire as seats.

  We removed our footwear and socks, drying them beside the flames as we began to make plans.

  “No, no,” Jenna told me. “Before we do much more, we have to contact the CAU as soon as we can.”

  I considered the idea. “I don’t agree,” I said. “Your organization has a mole, remember? Let me finish,” I hastened to add. Jenna had been getting ready to interrupt. “Sergei boasted to me about having a mole. I was his captive and I doubt he figured I was going to escape. My point is, why would he have lied about that?”

  “Supposing there is a mole,” Jenna said. “What’s your plan? You haven’t told me anything about what you found on the other side of the hatch in the complex. Did you find something?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “See,” she said. “This’s why I have to contact the CAU. You don’t trust me. Why should I trust you?”

  “I came back for you. I could have left you on the alien base.”

  “You would have been an unredeemable bastard if you’d done that. You had to come and get me.”

  I shook my head. “I absolutely did not. I wanted to get you.”

  That stopped her. She closed her mouth, frowning, finally looking up at me. “Why?”

  I must have taken too long to answer. She blushed a furious red color and shot to her bare feet.

  “Jenna,” I said. “Sit down.”

  “I’m going that way,” she said, pointing in a direction. “I don’t want you tagging along with me, either.”

  I chuckled. “Jenna, we have to save the planet, remember? We have to stick together.”

  “I’m going to contact CAU. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  “Okay… But what if that brings the Ukrainians down on your head? What if bringing the Ukrainians alerts Kazz and Philemon? We have to think this through.”

  “What’s your plan?” she demanded. “Do you even have one?”

  “Of course I have a plan.”

  “What?”

  I opened my mouth and slowly closed it. How far could I trust Jenna? If she was going to call CAU the first chance she had…