The Riddle (Alternate Dimensions Book 2) Read online

  We walked up the ramp and onto the ship, me praying the entire time that Bajol had been listening and was aware we were coming his way. Also, I had no idea if the sensor scrambling fields within the ship would be able to pick up the guard’s vitals then project them in a timely fashion.

  “Huh, this ship looks different than most transports I’ve seen. Where’s your shi–”

  He never finished the sentence. Instead, there was the tell-tale sound of an injector releasing its vile, and he fell to the floor in a heap.

  “Nice work,” I said, holding up my hand to high five Bajol. But the seirr just looked at me quizzically, and I realized slapping palms in celebration might not be a thing in this universe. That was shame. “All right, guys, guard is out.”

  “Thank goodness for that. So now that there’s apparently going to be some sort of final blitz for Zkkyy, what’s the plan?”

  “Easy. I’m gonna steal this guard’s clothes, infiltrate the prison, find Janix, and help him rescue the krelach and get her out to the mine. You guys rush the ship and deactivate the aerial shielding before the nanites expire.”

  “Are you crazy? You’re not even from this universe! How are you expecting to pull off pretending to be a government-paid employee?”

  “I’ll improvise. Discussion closed. I’m doing this. Bajol, help me get his clothes.”

  “Just so you know, I am very adamantly advising against this.”

  “Understood. And I am adamantly ignoring that. Now help me strip this dude.”

  We worked as fast as we could, and within a few minutes, I was all decked out in prison guard armor. It wasn’t exactly the best fit, but it was passable. Or at least I hoped it was. It wasn’t like I had much of a choice here. We needed to move hard and fast, and hopefully such a high-tech prison wasn’t about to expect such a low-tech attempt.

  “Ready?” I asked Bajol, standing in the now-closed doorway.

  “One moment. I’m calibrating your output to match this gentleman’s DNA signatures.”

  “Oh, right. Good idea.”

  “Thank you. I try, even if your idea is utterly ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, you can make fun of my idea after we’re off planet, all right.”

  “If we get off planet.”

  “When.” I corrected. “All right, heading out. Wish me luck.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Thank you, Viys’k.”

  “For the record, I think this is a great plan!”

  I took a deep sigh as I tried to waltz through the entrance for the maybe tenth time that day. I belonged here. I was a guard. Just your run-of-the-mill, every day, normal guard.

  I passed the reception desk and marched right to the card scanner. Reaching into my belt, I pulled out the card, scanned it, then leaned forward for the retina scan. Here was whether we would find out if my completely alien physiology meshed well with Angel’s toys.

  There was a buzz, and the shield dropped.

  I let out a breath I wasn’t aware I had been holding and walked down the hall I had last seen Janix disappear through.

  “Don’t get cocky now,” Angel warned in my ear. “You’re in their territory. My scanner is saying that Janix isn’t that far from you. Just go down this hall, take the elevator down three floors, then exit and turn right. If you walk quickly this should take you less than three minutes.”

  “Roger.”

  “I’m in the factory area now. I’m trying to scope out this lady, but I don’t see any Krelach anywhere.”

  “That’s because she isn’t there.” Bajol’s calm voice sounded over our earpieces.

  “What do you mean, she isn’t there? We downloaded her entire itinerary so we could know where she was every minute of the day.”

  “According to my scanners, her readings are coming from within the mine in the yard. Her heartrate is quite elevated, and her adrenaline levels are high. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that she is in danger.”

  “Crap.” I muttered. “How do I get there?”

  “Keep heading to the elevator. This time, ground floor and left. Oh, and run.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

  Although track and field had never been my thing, I was finding myself much more adept at sprinting the past few days. It turned out I just needed the proper motivation to get into the athletic mood.

  “I’m going to need your backup, Janix.”

  “Yeah, um, how do you expect me to do that? You assigned me to this shift, and now I’m literally surrounded by guards with blasters and stunners.”

  “Angel?”

  “Changing his assignment now and pinging the lead officer in that area. This is going to look suspicious as hell.”

  “Yeah well, it’s only a matter of time before they figure out that the strange guard with the suddenly much bouncier bits running through their halls is an impostor, too.”

  “And here I thought this was supposed to be easy.”

  I shook my head. Nothing in this galaxy was ever easy. I was surprised I was even able to reach the elevator without lasers popping out of the floor, or a massive black cloud manifesting to stop me.

  However, what I didn’t anticipate was how slow the thing was. Once I got in, I expected a quick shimmy down to the floor and then to dash out to save the day. It turned out that there were fifty floors between me and my destination, leading to two very anti-climactic minutes of just standing in a small, brightly lit tube as it rocketed down the chute. Action movie heroes didn’t have to deal with this kind of stuff. It wasn’t fair.

  But once those doors slid open, I was dashing off again. I whipped around the corner to my left, barreling toward another blue shield through which I could see the craggy peaks of the mine just beyond.

  The way Angel had explained it to me, the labor camp was built in a circle, with a sprawling complex for mining and processing ores at its core. Rich corporations paid next to nothing for the labor, and the Council had a place it could shove its mid-level criminals and still turn a profit. It seemed like slavery more than anything to me, but the prison system was just as messed up on my own home world, so I figured I couldn’t point fingers.

  “Um, I’m about to hit a wall. Any chance you can drop it?”

  “Give me a sec. Trying to direct the nanites to a specific location for control is like trying to fly a whole space cruiser through a doorway.” I steeled myself, preparing to hit the shocking barrier, but not willing to lose any momentum in case she got it down in time. My feet slammed into the floor, my heart hammered its own counter-rhythm as I approached. But just before I did hit the electrifying azure, it wavered then dropped completely.

  “Yes! Good job, Angel!”

  She sounded like she was about to say something back, but suddenly, an alarm split through the air, making my ears ache with its frequency.

  “What the hell was that? Did you trip something?” I kept my pace up, leaping over boulders and crevasses as I headed toward the center of the yard.

  “I-I don’t think so.”

  “Sorry, guys,” Janix’s voice cut over the speaker. “That was me. I wasn’t able to dispatch my escort as neatly as you did.”

  “Shit. Well, get to the mines as fast as you can. I’m already there.”

  “On my way.”

  “All right, Angel, Viys’k, time to hop on the ship and roll out all that extra cargo. The jig is definitely up.”

  “Copy. Oh, and Andi, we have three more minutes before the nanites reach a size where they’ll be noticed by the security measures in place and eradication will begin. No nanite control means no dropped shield, which means you’re stuck here.”

  “Yup, that sounds about right.”

  “Just wanted to make sure you understood. Angel, over and out.”

  And then, for just a moment, I was alone.

  Breathless, I arrived at the gaping entrance of the caves. I could see stacks and stacks of containers that held battered mining equipment–helm
ets, pickaxes, shovels, sifters. It seemed prisoners didn’t have the honor of using tools appropriate of the century we were in. That was probably a wise decision, security wise, but it seemed so wasteful of both time and energy.

  Almost as soon as I was within the dark entrance, I heard sniffling and the sound of something hard hitting flesh. That was all the encouragement I needed to run harder, and I drew one of the guns strapped to my thighs, shining the flashlight into the depths.

  There was nothing at first, but I followed the noise until I rounded a corner to see two mooreerie pummeling on a huddled form.

  “Hey! Stop!” I called. They whirled and looked shocked to see me. I don’t know if that was because the guards in this joint were paid off, or I was a female voice coming from an obviously male getup, but I didn’t pay it much mind either way. “Hands up, and slowly step away from the krelach.”

  They complied, slowly and cautiously moving forward until one read the designation patch on my chest. “What? You ain’t no MacGilvargardy. That dude never shuts up.”

  “I’m his sister.” I snapped, backing up a couple steps. I could sense them questioning the narrative here, the one where I was the in-power guard and they were my prisoners. They were sizing me up, trying to find a moment to strike.

  “MacGilvargardy ain’t got no sister.”

  “No, just two half-brothers and a cat.”

  “Oh, please, how would you know all that?”

  “Like I said, MacGilvargardy never shuts up. I know who his teacher was in the fifth grade. Now, who the hell are you?”

  They took another step toward me, unbidden, and I pulled another gun from my other thigh. Well, I had wanted action movie hero, and this was pretty much it. Me versus two muscled powerhouses, with a gun in either one of my hands.

  “It doesn’t matter who I am. The only thing you need to know is that I will let you get out of here and pretend like this infraction never happened, or I can shoot you.”

  “Really? You’re gonna shoot us, huh?” The alien raised their violently yellow eyebrows, and I bristled.

  “If you make me, because I’d really rather not.”

  “That’s funny, because I happen to now those are both Aesist blasters, and you don’t have the polarity turned on for either of them.”

  Oh no. That couldn’t be true…could it? It was a bluff. It had to be a bluff. “Yeah right, you think I’m gonna fall for that?”

  “Hoped you would, but it doesn’t particularly matter.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end, and I had the feeling I was in a trap, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what they were trying to pull on me. I had both of them dead in my sights. I would hear if anyone else was trying to sneak up behind me. By all accounts I had this in the ba–

  Something hard and heavy slammed into my shoulders, driving me into the ground with enough force to be seeing three of everything. I gasped, all the breath having fled to my body, and tried to roll away. I didn’t even make it to my feet before a kick sent me flying into the craggy wall to my right.

  Blearily, I tried to right myself and figure out what had happened. My vision cleared, and I saw that a nesr-roona was getting up from where I had been dive-bombed. He must have been crawling across the ceiling then dropped down right on top of me. I knew they seemed far too smug about something.

  “I wonder, do we get extra credits for killing whoever you are, too?” one of the mooreerie, the one who kicked me, practically purred.

  “Not sure,” I said, using the wall to help myself up. “But you can try.”

  The three of them laughed as they fanned out to encircle the front of me. “You sure? There’s a human phrase for this sort of thing, isn’t there? Pick on your height? No, that’s not it.”

  I took in a long breath that didn’t sound too dissimilar from a groan. “Do you mean pick on someone your own size?”

  He looked entirely too pleased at that. “Yes! Exactly.”

  “If you’re scared, you’re always welcome to leave. I’ll forget all about this unfortunate misunderstanding.”

  “Yeah, that’s not gonna work. If anything, this is about to get a whole lot more unfortunate. For you, that is.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  He didn’t waste any more time on banter. Instead, the three closed in on me. There was no way I was going to stand a chance against three assailants. At least not unless my abilities decided to kick in and do something particularly Kung Fu-y. The smartest thing to do would be to get myself out of their circle and fast.

  So, I took my chances on the smallest target. Diving forward, I put all of my weight into full-body barreling into the nesr-roona. We both tumbled to the ground and went rolling. I could feel its horns biting into me as we tumbled, but when we righted, I had the wherewithal to grab its uppermost nubs and slam its head into the cave floor. It tried to fight back after the first one, bucking me, but after the second one, it laid very still. For the briefest of moments, I was worried that I had killed it, but then fingers gripped my helmet and yanked me backward.

  From the momentum of the arm pulling me, I could tell I was about to be whipped forward by the neck, and that was definitely not something that I would enjoy. Thinking fast, I hit the release clasp, landing on my knees and whirling out of the way just as a wide foot kicked past me.

  Somehow, I got to my feet again, and now the mooreerie were regarding me a little more warily. But unlike action movies, they seemed to know better than to attack one by one. After a brief look to each other, they both charged me at the same time.

  I felt my temper peak a bit at this, and I found that familiar, white-hot prick of frustration flow through me. I didn’t like being hurt, and I certainly didn’t like the people who hurt me. Maybe it was time to make them hurt. Make them feel what it was like to be up against someone, who was impossibly powerful.

  The sinking, swirling sensation of change rushed through me, and instead of running, I braced myself and aimed a punch straight at one of the charging mooreerie.

  The blow hit right at the top of their head, and they crashed down into the ground without so much as a counter. But before I could even think to celebrate my victory, what felt like a sledgehammer slammed into my back, and I was sent flying forward.

  I landed hard, struggling to breathe or move my legs. I tried to crawl forward, but something flipped me over, and I barely made out the form of the yellow-haired brawler above me.

  “I don’t know what the hell you are, but I have a job to do. Vassus always hits his target.”

  I tried to say something pithy, but he crouched down to straddle my chest, two hands holding my shoulders down, and two wrapping around my throat.

  I writhed, trying to call on the power within me, but the only thing filling my thoughts was panic and the certainty that I was about to die. I needed air; I needed air so badly! My thoughts flashed back to the moment when the darkness had tried this same trick on me, but no matter how I gripped at the alien holding me, he didn’t budge.

  The edges of my vision started to dissolve, and my head was pounding sluggishly. Nothing made sense, and I couldn’t even figure out how to raise my arms, let alone fight with them. Then, just before everything slipped away, there was a deafening crack, and then the pressure was gone.

  “Andi? Andi! Are you all right? Come on, Andi, breathe!”

  There was something over my mouth, and then I felt air being forced through me. I gasped greedily, taking in all I could, and then the covering was gone, only to be replaced by manic laughter. “Gods! I thought you were dead. Don’t scare me like that!”

  Finally, my mind assembled itself enough to realize it was Janix posted above me now, the body of my assailant crumpled to the side with a pickaxe in his back.

  “D-did you kill him?” I heard myself squeak, voice barely a rasp.

  “Hey, it was you or him, Fire Skull, and I’d choose you every time. Now, I hate to rush you, but we gotta go now. We’ve
got less than a minute before nanites are noticed by security, and then bye-bye escape route.”

  “Right. Help me get the krelach.”

  “I’ll handle the alien. You just worry about getting to the entrance. I’m sure the yard’s about to be swarming with guards and inmates any moment now.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Um, Angel may have cut the power to every containment field in the joint when she realized you were in trouble.”

  “Well, let’s not make it a wasted effort then.” I struggled to my feet as he scooped up the beaten krelach in his arms. I could make out the orange blood dotting her face and fur, as well as what looked like broken claws. I hoped that she would make it.

  But I couldn’t spend much time pitying her. I needed to make sure we all got out of this. Although every step was painful, I forced myself back up to the entrance I had run through so brazenly.

  Although he was already carrying our rescue-ee, I still felt Janix’s spare arm wrap around my waist, offering me support as I struggled to make it.

  Then, like a literal angel, I saw the ship lower into view of the jagged opening of the work caves. The door opened and the ramp lowered, glowing enticingly. As soon as the walkway dropped down, Viys’k and Bajol were storming forward, yammering and grabbing at us, guiding us in.