On the Brink of Midnight #Blogbattle #Scifi

It’s time for another blog battle. A short story clash of the bloggers run by Rachael Ritchey. Go look at her blog, read about it and join in if you like.

Rules:

1. 1000 words max
2. fictional tale (or true if you really want)
3. PG (no more than PG-13) Content – let’s keep this family friendly!
4. Your story must contain the word(s) from the theme and/or be centered around the theme in a way that shows it is clearly related
5. Go for the entertainment value!
6. State the Genre of your story at the top of your post.
7. Post your story on Tuesday, by 11:59 PM PST
8. Use the hashtag #BlogBattle when tweeting your story, put a link back to your #BlogBattle Short Story in the comments section of this page, and/or include a link to this page in your own blog post (it creates a “ping-back” which will alert me and our friends to your #BlogBattle post)
9. Have fun!

Word for this week: Worm

The First part of this story can be found here: https://universeofpossibility.wordpress.com/2016/01/03/on-the-brink-of-midnight-blogbattle-scifi/

And continues where we left off…

Part 2:

Tira ran out onto the balcony after Sela “What is is?”

“I don’t know, I think it’s a wall of steam coming towards us, I think the western ocean is boiling off”

“What do we do?” Tira asked, slipping her hand into Sela’s then gripping it tight.

“We have to go – now!”” Sela turned, pulling Tira behind him her light, translucent gown flowing behind her as she struggled to keep up. Sela stood before a doorway, he passed his hand over a panel.

“Chancellor Galvor?” Tira asked.

“No time for that now – we have to go to the power transfer terminal. We don’t have much time” With that Sela stepped through the doorway and disappeared, pulling Tira behind him.

At the power transfer terminal there were people running around, shouting instructions and trying to compile reports. In the middle of this a doorway in the control centre glowed blue and through it stepped Sela pulling Tira behind him. At this point everyone stopped and stared briefly. A man stepped towards them, he was older what was left of his hair was greying. He addressed them in a calm by authoritative tone.

“What are you doing here? Who are you?”

“I’m doctor Sela Diemos and this is my partner, doctor Tira Phoelan. We’re here to help” Sela gave it his most enthusiastic performance, but he could see the situation was grim and the man wasn’t impressed.

“Well doctor’s Diemos and Phoelan you’re going to have to leave, we’re in the middle of a crisi situation right now and we don’t have time for visitors. In fact, how do you have access to be here?”

“These are all very good questions….” Sela prompted

“Tars Medan, I run the terminal. We need to get an enery field up to protect us from a wall of…”

“Steam and water, yes I know. The western ocean  is boilng off. Well Tars, we’re here to help and we can answer your questions and waste time or we can get on with this.”

“Well…” Tars tried to reply.

“I think I’ve worked out why our world seems to be stuck in time and this is causing us the problems we have now”

“Tell me” Tars demanded.

“Somehow a fragment of a black hole has ended up on our planet, time hasn’t stopped, it’s just running very, very slowly because of the time dilation effect of this fragment. I don’t know how this has happened…”

“A wormhole…” Tira thought outloud. Through this she had been standing there silently. “I think this isn’t an accident, black holes don’t lose fragments of themselves. I think we’re actually under attack and whoever did this has used a wormhole to take a piece of black hole from somewhere and put it on our planet”

Sela and Tars stood there for a moment, thinking. “I like that my love. I think you’ve got it!” Sela finally said “That’s the best explanation yet for this and it also shows us how we’re going to fix this. We need to locate this fragment and get it away from us. If we’re even cleverer, we can use it against our attackers” Sela strode towards a computer console, he tapped into the keypad and brought up the path of the the object he suspected was the black hole fragment.

“Tars, can you locate this object on the suface? We need to get it the location precisely as we need to create a wormhole to take this frgment away. While I like a sauna the thought of having my lugs burned out with superhot ocean water doesn’t appeal to me any more than to you I suspect, so we need to protect ourselves from this as well” Sela was now excited, almost like a child as he was going through the motions of when needed to be done.

“I’ll do what I can” Tars replied “But how are you going to create a wormhole from here. We don’t have the equipment or the power for it.”

“You have the power for it” Tira suggested ” You can  generate around 100 gigawatts can’t you?

“Yes, for a short time” Tars replied “We needabout 50 gigawatts to generate the protective field, we can only sustain that for a few days, this could last weeks”

“It won’t end Tars” Sela told Tars, not until we get this fragment off and time runny normally”

“We can generate the wormhole from the energy accelerator” Tira suggested “we should also be able to find our attackers from there”

“The control centre for the energy accelerator is outside the city. You only have 30 minutes until the steam cloud reaches you and you won’t be inside the protective field” Tars commented grimly.

“No time to lose then my friend” Sela slapped Tars on the shoulder and headed for the doorway “oh, one small thing I forgot. I need a favour Tars”

“Anything” Tars replied.

“I need all of those 100 gigwatts in about fifteen minutes – or we’re all going to die”

“You have an interesting way of negotiating Dr Diemos”

” I know, I’m renound for it. Some people don’t seem to appreciate it!” Sela strode towards the doorway as it lit blue Tira following. “You’re not coming my love – you can’t” Sela said to TIra. “Stay here and be safe”

“Try stopping me!” Tira told him “You need my help initiating the process in time before the steam cloud hits. Even if you didn’t, I’m still coming”

“But..” Sela tried to reply

“No buts, just do it” Tira insisted and pushed him through the door following him through. They both emerged on the other side, in the control centre for the energy accelerator.

“I’ll see if I can locate our attackers with a tachyon scan, for some reason we haven’t detected them yet,  they must be invisible” Tira was taking a terminal in the functional but abandoned control centre, it overlooked a huge ring, deep underground.

“I’m on our wormhole” Sela disappeared into the room next door and could be heard pulling at the huge power isolators. He closed three of them and suddenly a loud hum started emanating from all around. He reappeared into the control room wiping his hands.

“That’s done. Have you found anything?”

“Yes, a huge Draconian space cruiser, just outside the orbit of our moons” Tira stated with a sense of victory.

“Let’s have the co-ordinates” Sela was now in his serious mode, frowning. “I’m running up the enery accelerator” Just then a crackle came though. Sela picked up his communicator, Tars voice could be heard.

“I have the impact co-ordinates of that fragment you asked for” He stated “I’ve sent it through to your command centre”

“Good, I’m going to need about 100 gigawatts in about 5 minutes”

“You’ll have it” Tars told Sela “But the steam cloud hits in about ten minutes and you need time to shut it down before we bring up our shield”

“Don’t worry about that, I know how to do that” With that he shut off his communicator.

“Co-ordinates are set” Tira told him, the humming becoming louder and louder, like a huge wheel spinning up. The ring was glowing brighter as the immense energy built up inside it. For several minutes both Sela and Tira could do nothing but watch.

Copyright 2016 Simon Farnell

No ownership claimed on images.