Fade To Grey Book Two of Dimension Out Of Range With Jason Low Brian Burgess Gina, Britanny, and Brianna Diggers and Most of the Rest of the Characters of _Gold Digger_ 02 NOVEMBER 1996 ATLANTA, GEORGIA THE DIGGERS COMPLEX BRIAN'S ROOM Brian was awakened at 7 a.m. by the strangest noise he'd heard in quite some time. PRRRSSSHHHHTTT. It sounded like an airgun, only ten times worse. The weirdest part was the noise that occurred a fraction of a second after each firing of whatever it was. It sounded like a cross between a nail being fired into a wall and a huge electric discharge. He finally got up and went out into the hall. PRRRSSSHHHHTTT WHRACKzzzmmm. The room, the corridor, the entire complex shook every time he heard the sound. He walked down the hall cautiously and peered into the Bay of Tonka. The truck was not inside, but Jason and Brianna were, holding fearsome-looking weapons, and wearing eye and ear protection. They walked around the room, using a laser of some sort to aim the guns, and each fired another round. PRRRSSSHHHHTTT WHRACKzzzmmm. PRRRSSSHHHHTTT WHRACKzzzmmm. "Don't you guys have a firing range for that??!" Brian hollered. Brianna turned towards him, and it looked like she'd not been to sleep yet. Come to think of it, Jason looked really tired too. Brianna lifted her goggles and slung the ear protectors around her neck. "Sorry," she said to Brian. "Jason got this idea after we got back and we've been up all night working on it." "What the hell is"PRRRSSSHHHHTTT WHRACKzzzmmm. Jason had fired another round just as Brian spoke. "An anchoring system," Bri' said. She directed Brian's attention to the just- fired object, which looked like a huge staple embedded in the wall. Faint electrical charges danced across its surface briefly, just before the staple faded and blended in with the wall. "Anchors?" Brian echoed. "They'll be activated once we get the matrix completed," Brianna answered. "We'll need to get all of us in here at once. When it's powered up, it will permanently link all of us to this location--" "This DIMENSION," Jason added, coming over. "Not just the exact spot in the room where you were standing when we started it, but the exact dimensional coordinates as well. We will not be able to jump ever again unless we specifically use a proper gate. It works kind of like Gina's warp platform--if the system senses that we are in danger of being torn away from this dee, we'll be sent back here right away." "We've got a redundant power supply, drawing from almost anything we can hook up to," Brianna said. "The system can operate essentially FOREVER on its backup power supplies." "All this designed and implemented in one night?" Brian queried. "When I get an idea, I can just tell her and she can have a schematic up on the computer in minutes," Jason said, gesturing to Brianna. "And from there, I can build it, with his help, in less than an hour. These guns are just old mini-railguns I had lying around. We did create the spikes from scratch, though," Brianna added. "I know that Brianna and Gina proved that we're here for good, but I'm paranoid 'cause of that attack I had last night. It's an insurance plan," Jason said. "Looks expensive to me," Brian said, taking one of the railguns and hefting it. He changed his mind after a second, and added, "Looks like OVERKILL to me. When has Gina ever been wrong? However, I've got an idea, too. Is there any way to retrofit the spikes you've already put in?" "I suppose," Jason said, "but we've got to be back to work on the hyperdrive in an hour and a half. Can you be quick about it?" "Quicker than quick," Brian said, taking Brianna with him towards the lab. "Keep on firing, Jason," he threw over his shoulder. At eight-fifty, all of them were collected in the vehicle bay/lab. Brian's modifications had taken hold, and they were ingenious: He had rigged the spikes to also emit a burst of radiation upon startup that would emulate an anti- Frakes field. In doing so, the room/device would protect them even better, ensuring that they would be repelled by the magnetic-like field of particles that separates dimensions. That way, even if they were torn from the dimension, they would be reflected back right away, not actually leaving the dimension at all. "Incredible," Jason smiled. "I'd never thought of that. It's so easy. Anyway, are we all ready?" "Hang on," Gina said. She shut the door behind Seance, who was just arriving. With them and Ryan, Britanny, and the aforementioned Jason, Brian, and Brianna, the room was full. "Okay, let's do it." "Roger," Jason said, standing near a steel lockbox on the wall. He unlocked the protective case, swung it upwards on its hinge, and put his hand on the heavy-duty switch underneath. With only the slightest hesitation, he threw the switch. The lights in the entire complex (and to tell the truth, a good part of west Atlanta) dimmed. All the spikes arced and sent lightning through the room, its contents, and the people there. Then, as soon as it had started, it was over. "All done, Dr. Frankenstein?" Cheetah asked Jason sarcastically. Two hours later, they were engrossed in their work at the site of El Dorado. They were very close to completing the job, and then suddenly Jason's pager went into Full Hyper Alarm Mode. All heads swiveled to look at him. "A 747 just vanished near the Bermuda Triangle," he said, reading its screen. "The pilot reported a 'strange psychedelic phenomenon' just before the ship went off radar, and right after that, called it a 'dimensional rift'. It was bound for--gk?--Quagmire." Brian stared at him. "I got some weird readings from that area while we were coming in this morning, too," Brianna said. Jason looked at Gina. "Go," she finally said. "Just be CAREFUL, okay?" "Trust me," he answered, following Brian towards the truck. Brianna was just standing there watching. "Well, what are you doing?" Gina said to her sister. "Well, I wasn't sure--" "You'll never keep him near if you don't stick with him," Gina interrupted. "I can do this part with Cheets' help. Go with him, girl." Brianna raced to the truck and shut the door just as Jason was starting it up. "Hi," he said. "Hi back, let's go," she answered. "Back to the house first, though. I have some stuff I want to do to the truck just in case. It'll only take an hour." "Okay," he said as he noticed her calling up a schematic on her screen. Fifty-five minutes later, he was staring at his ride in a new way entirely. Brian's earlier hopes of the thing never flying had been dashed, as Bri' had put in a flight system that included thrusters for maneuvering. The crew compartment had been sealed airtight, too, with a removable force-field in between the back seat and the box. What was in the box was another thing entirely. In the not-quite-an-hour since they returned from El Dorado, Bri' had scanned in, CADded, and had the computer build two sets of power armor. They were now lying in the box of the truck, along with her own. "I have a weird feeling we may end up in space one of these times," she said to explain. "Or underwater. Or anything. In any case, we don't want to be caught unawares." "Um, yeah," Jason said, heading for the cab. "Let's get on with it." The truck accelerated as it never had before. He drove about 5 miles out of town, and then took to the skies. They arrived in the area of the Bermuda Triangle in about an hour. It looked positively benign from their vantage point. "Hm.. this could be harder than I thought," Brianna said. Jason was trying to fly and forget that he was in a 3 ton custom Dodge Ram truck, 32,000 feet above the surface of the Earth. "I'm not reading anything," Brian called out. Little did he or anyone else know that they were heading right for the distortion, except that they were on the wrong side of it. They passed 'through' it and then alarms howled like crazy, as the truck was pulled in from behind. "OH SHIT!" Jason yelled. "I can't hold it!" "Just hang on!" Brianna told them all, gripping onto any solid piece of the cab that she could. "Ride it out!" The truck tumbled as if it was caught in a windstorm, being tossed about like a child's toy. Then, it was completely gone. They heard a PSSHT as the hastily-added air system changed from high-altitude mode to space mode, and recirculated the existing air. The force fields between the cab and the box and the box and the tailgate automatically went up--holding in the atmosphere but able to be manually retracted, like an airlock. "Space?" Jason said, not realizing for a moment that the thrusters were moving them along without a problem. "Where are we?" Brian asked Brianna. "Umm.. looks like the Arm of Galileo," she said, peering at the scope. Brian gasped and swung around to look at Jason. He was staring straight ahead, a very pale expressionless look on his face. Brianna hadn't noticed. "Reading a derelict ship up ahead," she said. "It's not the airplane. It looks like that ship we reconned the first time we worked together as a team, except it's in ship mode, not robot mode, and it's all a tomato-soupy color instead of blue and white." "DON'T LET HIM GO OUT THERE!" Brian roared. Brianna whirled around to see Jason closing the last locks on his power armor. Bri was lunging for him, but once inside the armor, Jay was too fast. He opened the tailgate/hatch and was out in seconds. "What the heck's going on?" Bri' asked. Jason had no time to marvel about the power armor's speed and agility; he was only thinking about finishing this once and for all. The only problem was, he had no idea what he was going to do about it. He had ignored the radios in the suit, frantic calls from the other two. Now he could make out the SDF-3 in all its glory, a thousand kilometers away and closing fast. It was drifting and there were no life signs shown. However, a check of the ship's onboard chronometer indicated that it was mere seconds after he'd given the order to engage the fold drives, a million years ago. All of a sudden there was another contact on his radar, much smaller, closer, and faster. He looked behind him to see an armor rocketing towards him. He turned the volume up on the radio again, and caught Brianna in mid-sentence, sounding panicked and upset. "--really think that this will solve anything??!" "Listen," he snapped, knowing Brian would be eavesdropping. "I started this-- whether I wanted to or not--3300 years ago, right here. I intend to find out what's going on and stop it. I'm tired of this shit and I'm not going to take it anymore!" "GODD-MN IT, IT WASN'T Y--R F-ULT, -AY!" Brian hollered, the signal breaking up due to the range as Jay and Brianna neared the ship (and got farther from the truck). "D-N'T DO TH-S--" Then there was nothing. And then, after a split second, Brianna's voice rang in loud and clear on a private local frequency. "Jason! Answer me!" she demanded. "I'm here," he said calmly. "What do you think you're doing?" "Securing all our futures," he responded. "I was in charge of this ship when it tried to enter hyperspace 3300 years ago--or maybe 33 seconds ago, I don't know, it's all relative. It was the first time we jumped and probably set the stage for what followed. The fact that it still exists out here in time means that it's possible that it'll strike us again in the future, and I can't allow that to happen." He was very close to the ship now, but he didn't want to just leave Brianna out in space, so he idled there. "But we fixed all that," she said, sounding like she was close to tears. As he turned to face her, meters away, he saw that she was. "We did it, Jay, with all those tests and programs and those bloody devices we spent all of last night installing!" She came closer. "You don't have to do this!" "I thought I'd put it behind me, too," he told her, gripping her upper arms, as if they were standing on solid ground, instead of hanging in space a million miles from nowhere. (He offhandedly realized it would be the only time they would be at each other's eye level unless he stood on a Coke crate.) "But I'm way too pessimistic about this. If it's here, there's the remotest possibility that it could affect us--and I don't want that possibility to exist." "But you're--you're going to go in there, aren't you?" she said, nodding towards the ship. "Yes, I am. My aim is to destroy every piece of equipment onboard, including the fold drives." "What if that's what causes all of you to jump?" He smiled. "I don't believe in that paradox crap.. anymore. I'll be okay, and so will everyone else." She paused for a second. "I'm coming with you," she said determinedly. "No, you're not, because I want you and Bri to go find that plane and finish what we started. What I plan to do is start the ship up and then initiate a self-destruct, and then blast the hell out of everything I can find. So I'm going to be traveling near light-speed when the drives blow. I'll eject myself from the ship, and the resulting disruption of the warp field will trip the sensors in the lab back home, which'll return me there. I'll beat you home," he smiled again. She looked like she was about to protest, but then stopped herself. She smiled and took hold of him. "Good luck," she said. They drew each other into an embrace, and she went on, "And you'd damn well better be back at the house when we get there." He laughed. "I will. I'll even have cleaned up the place." Then she laughed, and they parted, hanging there in space for a moment. Brianna smiled broadly, gave a carefree salute, and then turned and rocketed back towards the approaching truck-in-space. Jason turned to the half-a-kilometer-high side of the ship before him, and went to work searching for an airlock. << Metallica "Hero of the Day" _Load_ >> The corridors of the SDF were eerily silent. Not even the trademark thrumming of the drives that Jason remembered so well was present. Thankfully, neither was the trademark crew. From the displays in Jason's suit, it was apparent that all the atmosphere had been bled from the ship. Gravity was off, as were most of the lights, save the emergency systems. It was as if the crew had outright abandoned ship, but every escape pod was present. Still, there was debris and litter strewn about, as if everyone had picked up and left in the middle of everything. He brushed a flock of papers aside and found himself standing before the door to the fold drive compartment. There wasn't time to try to remember codes that were (to him) three millennia old, so he raised his left arm, which gripped his Gyro-Jet pistol in its hand. He loaded up a micro-missile and let it fly. After the explosive charge had dissipated, he realized that apart from dislodging the door, he'd stirred up all the stuff that was floating in the null-gee confines of the ship. First he issued forth a mental 'oops', but then he thought, He forgot that the self-destruct could only be enabled from the TIC command bridge. With only the slightest hint of reluctance, he boosted back into the corridor and found a ladder to the next deck. Minutes later, he blew open the door, which popped out of its track, severely bent, and floated out into the TIC itself, hundreds of feet above the floor of the stadium-sized room. He saw his chair, close to Aileen's, and almost lost it. However, he reminded himself of the task at hand, and made his way over to the command console, pushing Skull Leader's--Rod's--chair aside. He looked around the TIC and its debris and saw a controller's headset floating in the flotsam. He grinned, boosted over to it, and grabbed it, returning to the computer. He checked the broadcast frequency of the headset's transmitter, dialed into that frequency, and was rewarded with feedback. Excellent! He tore the receiver away from the headset, then pried the control pad off the computer and removed the console mike, twisting the wires of the headset's receiver in its place. "Computer," he said aloud, "Identify me." "Admiral Jason Alexander Low," a monotone voice responded. "Yes," he exulted, pumping a fist. "Computer, set course to zero mark zero and prepare to engage." "Affirmative." "Computer, authorization S-953486 Jason Alexander Low. Initiate autodestruct." "Need concurrence of Admiral Hunter, Admiral Rehn, or Admiral Burgess." "Damn," Jay said, remembering the failsafes. He switched to the suit's normal frequency. "Brian, can you hear me?" There was, of course, no response. He still had ideas. He switched back to the headset's frequency and said, "Computer, count the crew." "Total crew complement is one." "Computer, authorization S-953486 Jason Alexander Low. Initiate autodestruct." "Need concurrence of Admiral Low." "I concur. Initiate autodestruct." "Set time limit." "Three hundred seconds. Also set fold drives to engage in two hundred ninety five seconds." "ATTENTION! ATTENTION!" the voice boomed in his helmet. "TWO HUNDRED NINETY SECONDS TO AUTODESTRUCT." He set the volume on 1 and kicked in full thruster power, returning to the fold drives. He strafed them with all the weapons he had at his disposal, cracking the drive casings wide open and releasing millions of cubic meters of whatever substances the drive contained. he thought as he carried on to navigation and astrogation. He dropped a pair of grenades in each and let them annihilate each other. He listened for the computer voice, now quiet. "attention. attention. one hundred twenty seconds to autodestruct." Plenty of time. He decided, for good measure, to go to the bridge and blow it up too. He realized that the route he'd take would take him past his old quarters, but he fought hard the urge to stop by. He had a distressing vision of himself in there, reminiscing, forgetting what was going on, or possibly finding something he didn't want to see. The ship was at sublight speed as he arrived on the bridge. He raked fire across all the control pads, through Lisa's command chair, into the Big Screen, and everywhere else, until he was down to nothing but ten missiles remaining. He used those ten missiles to fire directly ahead as the computer counted down from ten seconds. "NINE." The thin piece of Lexan directly ahead of the forward stations shattered. "EIGHT." The remaining eight missiles streaked towards the main bubble, an expanse of double-walled transparent aluminum. "FIVE." He launched off the bridge deck and into the void between the bridge and the main bubble, following his missiles. "THREE." They collided with the main bubble in a soundless explosion. "ONE." The bubble cracked, tore, then completely disintegrated, letting Jason pass through unscathed. "ZERO." Everything went white. 07 NOVEMBER 1996 14.04 PM ATLANTA, GEORGIA THE DIGGERS COMPLEX LAB 06-A (THE BAY OF TONKA) A siren sounded twice, sounding like a submarine about to dive. Gina's computer's voice also spoke. "WARNING! DIMENSIONAL SAFETY SYSTEM ACTIVATED!" It hadn't quite barked that sentence out when a deafening roar exploded into the room. Smoke and light burst forth out of nowhere, then disgorged a metal- clad figure, who tumbled gracelessly several times and slammed into the back wall of the bay quite hard. "OOoooooaaahhh...." it said, then realized where it was, and slowly removed its helmet. Jason looked around, then looked at the clock, then wished himself a happy 24th birthday as he collapsed, exhausted, to the floor, to sleep for a bit. "Jason? Jason?" Brianna stood up and put her hands on her hips, in mock annoyance, looking at her friend. He was sitting there exactly where she'd found him when they got home an hour ago, up against the wall of the truck bay, head drooping to one side, sound asleep. Still in his armor, even. she commented to herself, smiling. "Jay, get up," she tried once more, whispering in his ear. Presently, his head moved slightly, and his eyes opened wide enough for her to tell that he was indeed awake. "Are you okay?" said she. "Yeah," he answered very quietly, in a kind of a moaning voice, as if he was very tired. "You did it, Jay. We were 5 parsecs away and we saw the blast. We got the plane, too. Mission successful,.. Admiral." She grinned. He turned up the palm of his hand in order to accept her high-five--well, in this case, low-five--and said, "Good job", then his head nodded forward again. "Jay? You still in there?" "What time is it?" "Four-thirty in the afternoon," she said. "I need more sleep." "Wouldn't you feel better getting out of your armor and sleeping in your bed?" she asked, but he was already out like a light. She shook her head, smiling, and for the second time since she'd met him, she picked him up, cradling him in her arms, and carried him to a place where he could sleep comfortably. As she pulled the covers up over him, having removed his armor but left him his clothes, she said, "Happy Birthday, Jay." Then she walked out of his room and went to get some rest herself. The next morning, at breakfast, Brian commended Jason on a job well done. "Thanks," Jason said, "but it wasn't much. I just went in and set the self- destruct, then buggered off." "That was a huge explosion," Brian added. "We could see it five parsecs away." "So I hear," Jason responded. "However, don't think it was a big victory. I think it's only part of what's to come. I've still got the bad feeling I had the day before yesterday." "Still a quake in the Force, Luke?" "Yeah," he told Brian. "Something like that." "The crew of the airliner couldn't help much," Brianna said, sitting down. "All they saw was the vortex off to starboard, and then they got sucked into it like it was a huge microburst--or a gravity well." "Speaking of gravity wells, how about the hyperdrive?" Jason said. "Almost done," said Brianna. "Just a couple more things left to do. We'll wrap it all up hopefully next week." When she noticed his eagerness for information, she looked at him and said evenly, "What are you thinking of right now?" "Well, now that the truck is spaceworthy, I, uh, may want to, um, cough tag along," he blurted out with only a hint of uncertainty. Brianna's expression was confusing: it had elements of disappointment, surprise, joy, and concern all at once. "We discussed this already, I thought," she said. "Well, we did, but how do you know that it wouldn't be better for us to come with you?" he offered. "But especially with these weird dimensional anomalies, shouldn't you stay here?" she came back with a counterpoint. "Y'know, I tend to agree with Jay," Brian said. "Even though he is a bit of a loner at times, together, the bunch of us're nigh-unstoppable. If we stay here without you guys, we might not be able to succeed." It was the first time someone had even entertained the possibility of failure since they had become a team. Everyone looked at each other. "I don't know," said Bri', shaking her head. "What if this dimensional stuff becomes too hot for people here to handle?" "If one match won't stop a snowstorm, will a flamethrower?" Jason replied. "Hold on," Brian said, trying to calm the other two down. "What if we take whatever it is that we're going to use as a ship, to get us to Aebra, and set up a system like you guys put in the lab? Then, during the trip, which you said will take a month, we'll just pop through a light-gate back to here, address any problems that come up, and then return to the ship." "Not that easy," Jason said. "The whole reason we're putting together this hyperdrive is that the light-gates won't work for such a long distance." He cursed under his breath. "I should've thought before I blew up the SDF-3.. we could've used the fold drives to get us there." "No god damned way," Brian spat. "Those things got us in enough trouble in the RDF years. Need I remind you of a 4 hour fold that actually took five years?" "Yeah, right," Jason nodded. He had remembered, he just didn't think about it right then. "Anyway," Brianna cut in, "I still think you guys would be better off staying here to keep things in line." "What would you have done before we came here?" Jason retorted. "..We would've expected Genn and Seance and the others to stick around," she admitted. "Right. What makes you lose your faith in them now?" "Oh, come on," she snapped. "I don't mean it like that. What could we do that they couldn't?" "I think what he's trying to say," Brian said, "is that home would be covered by Genn and the others, while we could support you guys with our presence." "I know that," Brianna responded. "It's just that--" "It's just that there's a known danger right here, right now, and you don't want to have too much of the force concentrated in one area, right?" Jason asked. "..Yeah, that would be it," she finished. "Well, keep in mind that we knew your reputation--'your' meaning everyone who lives and works out of this complex--long before we got here," Brian said, catching on to what Jason was getting at. "And we feel confident to leave them here to handle things, so we figure you should, too." After a brief pause, Jason added, "But don't think we're trying to run the show." This caused Jay and Bri to laugh, and then Bri' finally caved in and saw that they had valid points. And she thought the last comment was kind of funny, too. They went and told Gina, who was similarly nonplussed. However, she did agree that they would be helpful, especially with their knowledge of faster-than- light travel. "Well, I don't suppose there's any point in telling you how dangerous this could be, huh?" Gina said, looking at Jason. "No, not so much," he returned, smiling. After their arrival at the site of El Dorado, while they were preparing to complete the work on the hyperdrive, Gina abruptly stood up and called out to Jason. "Jay, can you come over here for a moment? I need to discuss something with you." Jay looked up at her, over on the other side of the crater, gesturing to an alcove. He nodded, stood up, and followed her. They had just gotten out of earshot of the others when Gina forced him to sit down. He did, back against the wall and legs sprawled out across the corridor, and Gina sat down similarly on the other side, facing him. "What's this all about?" he said, confused. "If you guys are going to come with us to Aebra, I think we'd better have a talk." "What about?" "You and Brianna, mostly." Jason tried not to roll his eyes. "What's wrong now?" "There's quite a bit you don't know about her, even if you do know what you know from your comic book," Gina said quietly. She was being quite serious, or at least as serious as she could be when talking about Jason knowing her past via a comic book. "Into how much detail did your books go?" "Well.. I know that she's a clone of you and Brit, of course, and I know how she came to be, but that's about it. To tell you the truth, I, um, never was able to collect anything earlier than the issue when you and Kahn fought off those monsters with the pudding cup." Gina smiled at the memory. "So you don't know anything that went on during Brianna's creation?" "No more than what you've told me, no; I've never asked." Gina sighed. "I think it's time you know." Over the next hour or so, Gina told Jason everything, from the mission she and Cheetah were on that started the curse, to the attempt at home to remove same, to the ferocious battle with Brianna during the latter's possession by the remnants of the curse, and the guilt that Bri' felt after being freed from its entrapment of her. Gina made sure she directed Jason's attention to the fact that Brianna was for the longest time fighting her mixed feelings stemming from the fact that she was a combination of Brit and Gina. Gina also told him, once again, what a dramatic change she'd noticed in her sister after Bri' started hanging around Jason. It was more than just being happy to be with someone, Gina told him; it was as if the catalyst that helped Brianna finally gain her own individual identity was Jason's caring for and about her. Finally, staring at the floor by his feet, Jason said, "Thank you. I never really realized how complicated that all was." "I didn't mean to bring you down or anything," Gina said, concerned. "It's just that--" "No, I know," he answered, nodding, "We are about to head off on a very crucial mission and you wanted me to be able to keep my mind on the task at hand. You wanted there to be no doubts as to what was going on." She smiled. "Something like that." She got up, offering him her hand. "No thanks," he said. "I'm gonna sit here for a few minutes longer." "You OK?" "Yeah, I am.. I just want to think about it just a wee bit more. Don't sweat it, I'll be back." "Okay." She turned to walk away. "Gina?" She stopped, looking back at him. "Hm?" "Thanks for all the help and kindness you've shown me and Brian these past months." She smiled. "I feel like I've known you guys all my life. You're always welcome." Then she turned and left him there, sitting, staring off into space. he said to himself. He thought about Brianna's past, both told to him by Gina and by the comic series he'd read in his youth. Her confusion at the concept of being a clone of both her sisters; her first memories and behavior being tainted by the effects of the curse; her pain at seeing Gina and Britanny always get what they wanted, and therefore, what SHE wanted as well. he realized. After a few more moments, he got up and headed back towards the others.