Through the Portal and Back Again

Part 6 of Significantly Advanced Tech

By Jeffrey Von Hauger

The Captain slid back the chrome lid and revealed half of an ancient star map. His exact #71EEB8 DNA replicas moved about the bridge keeping the Dodecahedron Gravimetric Phase Shifter gliding rapidly through space. The clone playing the role of Captain on this flight leaned forward dramatically onto the table and looked at each of the non-clones, one by one, square in the eyes.

"Well, let's see if it matches up with yours?" When dealing with species who valued individual identities the #71s found it useful to use a spokesperson; a charismatic one.

Surrounding the underlit lightbox table were Taegu and Macrai of Varan, Abaddon St. Baal of Hades, Sister John Murphy the 19-year-old human with a Joan of Arc complex, and Pippalotti Ritz of Grandor.

Abaddon tucked up his wings and eyed Murphy as she pulled his half of the map out of her pocket and set it on the table. The two pieces fit together perfectly.

"Both are scribed in Melock's hand," she said.

The Captain rubbed his chin furiously and cranked one eyebrow upward.

"When read together, they show a completely different set of coordinates. Helm!"

His commands were instantly relayed to every clone on the ship, as well as uplinked to their deep space guild, and transmitted back to #71EEB8 space. The ship took an impossible 47.6-degree starboard turn, opened a new gravity well, and fell into it.

"ETA to adjusted coordinates: 32.7 seconds." The clone piloting wasn't used to saying these things aloud but did so for their guests.

Sister Murphy held her gold electro-bat in front of her like a samurai warrior and whispered to her weapon, "I'm ready."

"Ready for what?" Pippa's nervous smile was as golden as Murph's bat.

The ship disengaged its gravity drive and slung around a small celestial dwarf. All eyes turned to the view scream and a large metal oval floating in space. It was crawling with Ibi-Ero Makina robotic lifeforms. Its construction appeared complete and at its center was a Makina assault ship.

"One organic life form detected," informed the clone monitoring the sensors.

"Melock!" Pippa, Murphy, Abaddon, and the clone Captain all said simultaneously.

Turbo bolts fired towards them from the Makina ship. The clones moved in to engage. The oval ring began to spin like a gyroscope at an alarming rate. A blinding white flash consumed the Makina and burst out of the oval toward the #71 ship.

"Prepare yourself, Pippa!" Murphy spread her legs in a fighting stance.

"For what!?" She reached for Abaddon's hand but it was too late.

The light consumed half the clone vessel and the line where it stopped went right down the center of the bridge splitting the geometric orb in two. Pippalotti and Murphy were gone along with the front half of the ship. The clones on the remaining half were sucked out into space. Bodies floated everywhere. The massive steel oval slowly spun down in the distance. Makina soldiers drifted helplessly in the void.

Abaddon floated with his great white wings spread out in a swan song. His head turned and looked back at the only other living beings left on the bridge. The two Varan women, whose scales protected them from the vacuum, were scurrying along the control panels. When they saw Abaddon was still alive they linked arms, reached out, and grabbed him by the wing. They reeled him in through a pressure door to a part of the ship that still had an atmosphere.

~ Exit ~

Dear Reader,

I must take a moment now to address the idea that even in a world were angel-winged birdmen in expensive suits like Abaddon or space hardened species like the Varan lizard people exist, it has become apparent that when Melock the Wise, the most powerful of all wizards, steps into the picture, things get a bit skewed.

It's more than the fact that this old man stole a Makina brain matrix and attempted to trade it with the #71 clones. It now seems he was actually working with the Makina to create some kind of large scale teleportation device. The oval anomaly was completely off the charts and the Varan and surviving clones struggled to make heads or tails of it. Melock's previous boast of having transportation abilities beyond their understanding proved valid. They witnessed him and the Ibi-Ero open a dimensional portal in space-time and that kind of technology, if it were successfully harnessed by the robotic species, could result in an unfortunate shift of galactic power away from the more traditionally organic lifeforms.

And where did our hero Pippalotti vanished to? Well, that is a place only familiar to her new friend Sister Murphy and her mentor the wise old wizard. Unfortunately for the other characters in this story, they are scientifically advanced and intelligently astute enough to know without a doubt that there is, in fact, no such thing as magic.

~ The Great Stone Mountains ~

Summer only lasts about a month on the step of the great stone mountain range. The white elk give birth in the long green grass and the fairy folk and gnomes lend a helping hand. The Elves of the pine forest valley below have even been known to venture out to enjoy the brief splashes of sunlight in the mythical land of near-endless winter.

On this particular afternoon, the herd looked up in terror as the sky was literally falling. A convex geometric dome of fractal color ripped through the atmosphere leaving a blackened trail of dead rainbows in its wake.

A second shape that could only be described as a metal fortress followed spitting blobs of fire at it, killing the dome's beautiful colors. When the ship impacted, it shook the earth so much that the dwarves below told tales of it for a hundred years.

Further up the mountain at the mouth of a large cave appeared Pippa, Murphy, and Melock. The little old man with his ascetic robes and Fu Manchu mustache stood barefoot in the light snow. He took a moment to loop his long hair up on top of his head in a messy bun.

"Pip, I was nervous our last adventure might've scared you off? I'm so glad you two are getting along."

Looking grayer than normal, Pippa folded forward and vomited over the side of the cliff.

"Teleportation can be disorienting the first time." Melock gave her a sympathetic pat on the back.

Murphy made as if to embrace her mentor but found restraint and stood up straight and proud.

"It's good to be home. I've missed the fresh smell of our world." She filled her lungs and exhaled a warm visible breath in the crisp mountain air.

Pippa spat and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. "What is this place?"

"Well, if you two ladies would be good enough to stand behind me, I'd like to introduce you to the matriarch of the frost dragons."

He pressed his fingers together in front of his chest and formed a small ball of fire, which he proceeded to throw into the mouth of the cave. The fireball sailed with speed, lighting up the darkness within; a dull concussion was followed by a burst of light.

"Do you mean Varans? Murph kept calling the Varans dragons. Are we on the Varan ice world?" Pippa looked around in wonder.

"Oh my, no. I mean real dragons." He had no sooner said that than a growl and a chilling blast of icy cold air rushed from the cave.

"Mochi-Yuki, Queen of the Frost Dragons. I, Melock the Wizard, have a favor to ask," he spoke in a loud clear voice into the cavern.

Melock waited for a reply wiggling his toes in the snow.

A deep accented female voice answered from within. "Melock? If it was you who threw fire into our lair, the only favor you shall have is death."

A huge white and blue scaled head the size of the entire cavern appeared at the entrance. She scraped her curved horns on the roof breaking loose stalactite icicles. The beast could have easily swallowed all three of them in one bite from her massive jagged-toothed jaws.

"Holy...shit..." Pippa's mouth hung open and the dragon catching the glint of her golden teeth smiled at her.

"Pippa, shhh," warned Murphy.

"I'm afraid our world has met a new enemy and it is they who throw fire." Melock gestured down the mountain at the Makina blasting the remains of the crashed half of the clone vessel.

"Then they shall die!" The mammoth wintery dragon pulled herself out of the cave.

"Perfect. That's exactly the favor I would ask of you; to help us defeat them."

Yuki paused. "And what do you offer in return for this favor?"

Melock waved his hands around again and a large wooden crate appeared out of nowhere on the hillside. He walked over to it, produced a chunky iron key by reaching behind his ear, and proceeded to unlock the padlock on the crate front. Its side opened up and gold coins spilled into the snow.

"Will this do?" he asked.

"Indeed. I'll even let the pretty one keep her charming teeth." And with that, she flapped her massive wings and took to the sky.

"She's going to let me keep my teeth?" Pippa shot a sneer at Melock.

"Dragons tend to have a gold fetish, Yuki especially. She's probably jealous of your teeth. Like a status symbol. You could tell her you're royalty and she'd believe it."

Pippa's eye-roll response suggested it wasn't far from the truth.

In the sky above, the massive wingspan of the dragon caught the attention of the Makina. Their ship turned away from firing on the wreckage and attacked Yuki. Her aerial maneuverability was impressive and she dodged the first round of volleys but then they shot a hole right through her left wing.

Yuki's roar echoed across the valley sending birds of the forest into flight. She did an arcing u-turn, got behind the Makina craft, and froze their engines with her icy breath. Gravity grabbed hold and pulled the ship into the mountainside. The resulting explosion rained fire and steel on the valley below.

Yuki flew over both wrecks and doused them in liquid nitrogen. The fires extinguished and the hull of the Makina ship cracked open. She circled overhead looking for any sign of movement and being satisfied with her work returned to the edge of the mountain. She grabbed the crate of gold with her prehensile claw and carried it back into the depths of her cave.

"I would've done that for free." Her words echoed as her tail vanished from sight.

"I suppose we should check for survivors." Melock snapped his fingers and the next second they were standing beside the wreckage of the clone ship.

"Stop doing that!" Pippa grabbed onto Murphy's shoulder until her balance returned.

Melock focused on the shattered wreck. "You're getting better at it. You didn't vomit this time. There are two alive in there." He vanished.

A moment later he reappeared out of thin air with two #71EEB8 clones.

"How is this possible? To transport living matter without extensive technological hardware?"

"Where is your containment unit? Your power source?"

"This entire star system has only the most primitive abilities. The exotic lifeforms here have never been cataloged. And furthermore, where are we?" asked each of the clones in succession.

"Eunuchs; all reading, all knowledge, and no faith," suggested Sister Murphy.

A ball of energy struck one questioning clone and he disintegrated instantly. The remaining four turned to see a damaged yet functional survivor of the Makina ship. It fired its disruptor again; a yellow ball of energy sailed across the step heading right at Melock. Murphy leaned in and batted it away.

The Makina soldier raised its other hand and a round medallion flopped out from under Melock's robe, ripped free of his neck, and flew into the robot's magnetized grip. It began to vanish.

"Follow, follow, follow, follow!" shouted Melock in quick succession.

~ Return ~

For Pippa and the others, reality bent into a cone. They were flung across the galaxy in an instant, star systems bled away into a trailing blur of light, and they found themselves on the battle bridge of an Ibi-Ero Makina assault ship surrounded by ruthless robotic soldiers.

On the viewscreen was the oval teleportation device. The horizon was dotted with Makina assault craft, Grandor battleships, #71 deep space guild freighters, and Varan bar of gold cruisers all fighting with each other. The huge oval was surrounded by the Varan rectangular ships and the Makina, sensing that it would fall into their hands, fired on it. The oval exploded and the Makina retreated toward their homeworld.

Pippalotti regained some composure after emptying her stomach on the metal deck and thought loud and hard with her neural transmitter.

"I'm on this Makina ship and they have Melock and his transport device, Murphy, and one #71 clone!"

The Makina crew spoke in a rapid binary language, rattling off an insane series of ones and zeros in an instant like a verbal Gatling gun. They raised their weapons and fired stun blasts into the two humans, the clone, and the Grandorian.

In their language, they said, "The Grandor species is transmitting identity coordinates."

But if one's ear could distinguish sounds as quickly as the Makina, it would have sounded like:

01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000111 01110010 01100001 01101110 01100100 01101111 01110010 01101001 01100001 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01110010 01100001 01101110 01110011 01101101 01101001 01110100 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101001 01100100 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101001 01110100 01111001 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101111 01110010 01100100 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110100 01100101 01110011