The Quantum Connection

CHAPTER 27

I had my alien armor suit on everywhere except for my head. I figured that Opolawn wouldn't recognize me and would think I was up to something if he couldn't see my face. I also grabbed an extra warp armor belt in case mine went out. I wanted to be prepared for anything, whether I would need another one or not. "Be prepared" was the only credo that seemed to make any sense to me at this point. So I grabbed everything I had with me that would fit in my pockets. I put on my double shoulder-harnessed nine-millimeter Glocks just in case. I didn't think that a handgun was going to do me any good in a high-tech battle against a creature as powerful as Opolawn, but again, be prepared.

I hadn't told Opolawn how or where on the surface I would meet him, so I called out over the YIT to him and he opened a communications channel. I told him I was coming out and that I would meet him on the ground at the landing field we were at earlier. He agreed to that location and told me that he was losing his patience and that I had two minutes.

Tabitha set up two warp bubbles around the Phoenix. The first one was the one that was already in place and was holding off Opolawn's yellow tractor beam. She adjusted the interior space of the bubble enough so that she could project a second bubble. I flew the little alien ship out past the location for the inner bubble and she turned it on and turned off the outer bubble. The light bombarded the ship and the bubble and Opolawn's air force was surprised because fourteen ships surrounding the Phoenix's warp bubble opened fire on it when the outer field went down.

"CLEVER MONKEY." Opolawn's voice boomed over the Gray ship's intercom as several of his fighters fell in beside me. I kept my warp armor on just in case he tried something fishy.

"You didn't think we were that stupid, did you?" I called back at him and faked a laugh.

I landed the ship meters away from where we had landed the Phoenix earlier that day and I hopped out onto the platform where I had dumped Prawmitoos.

"Okay, Opolawn, here I am!" I yelled up at the blinding miniature sun.

Opolawn drifted slowly down to the ground and dimmed himself slightly. He almost dimmed himself enough that you could tell it was nighttime.

"Hand over the controller, monkey, and no tricks," he said.

I placed the replica controller on the ground in front of me and backed up so the controller was on the edge of the bubble. I expanded the warp armor bubble to its maximum and then I turned on the second warp bubble. The second bubble I kept nearly skintight so I could turn off the outer bubble, leaving the picophage control mechanism lying on the ground unprotected and between myself and the alien.

Opolawn began to laugh as he walked toward the device confidently, and arrogantly he said, "Monkey, you should learn where your place is." He bent over to pick up the controller and for the first time I realized that his knees bent both ways.

"Now!" I yelled into the comm. Opolawn looked up just as the squeeze play warp missile appeared and caught him in a squeeze. The force of the implosion threw me back a thousand meters, and debris and rubble blasted through the air around me. I warped into Opolawn from a head-on position to keep him off balance. The impact sent him flying about eighty meters straight up above me since I caught him at the bottom of his protective field—whatever it was—and it was like I had punted him straight upward.

"Don't stop now!" I yelled up at the Phoenix as three more squeeze play missiles caught him. Then Jim and Anson zipped out of the Phoenix and began pounding on Opolawn's air and space forces with their warp armor. Tabitha and 'Becca continued to fire away at Opolawn with the missiles.

Mike, where is the SuperAgent down here?

It is in the hangar, Steven.

Show me in my mind, Mike.

Okay, Steven. Then I had a map of the landing field in my head and there was the SuperAgent, just inside the hangar doors only fifty meters away.

Mike, where is the transmitter of Opolawn's tractor beam? Show me!

Here, Steven. The map in my head scrolled a kilometer to the south and blinked where the beam was located.

Thanks, Mike.

I warped at top armor speed to the tractor beam facility and continued right on through the wall of the building and out the other side. I turned upward and did a loop-de-loop and straight down through the shaft of the thirty-meter-diameter dish transmitter. The transmitter aperture sparked and creaked and shuddered violently, but the thing didn't go out. So, I did a zigzag pattern downward throughout the facility, flinging equipment, debris, and red-eyed red-skinned pointy-eared aliens to and fro. Finally, the big aperture of the transmitter crumpled under its own weight and imploded. The tractor beam blinked twice and was followed by a gigantic explosion and bright orange flash. The blast wake jostled me a bit as I blazed a warp trail out of the area and back to the landing field.

"Tabitha, are you gone yet?" I called her.

"I let loose about ten more missiles and then hit the gas! We are about two-tenths of a light year away and picking up speed. You'll have to bring Anson and Jim," Tabitha said.

"I understand," I said as I set down on the landing field. "Jim, Anson, where are you?"

"We are straight above you and headed your way." Then they appeared right beside me in static warp bubbles. "Okay, good. Let's get the hell out of here."

"NOT SO FAST, MONKEYS!" A flash of light from above scattered the three of us by a hundred meters. Opolawn fired his lightning bolt at us. The smaller personal warp fields were strained tremendously by the bolt, much more so than was the Phoenix's system.

Steven, your warp armor can't take many more hits like that one.

I was afraid of that. Thanks for the warning, Mike.

Okay, Steven.

"Anson, Jim, scatter and don't give him a target! Keep moving at high speeds!" I shouted over the comm.

"Roger that shit!" I knew that came from Anson.

"You got it, Steve!" Jim said.

The three of us got Opolawn in the classic dogfight merry-go-round. Anson would zip by him and then I would go head-to-head with him from a different direction, while Jim would be trying to get an angle on him. We rolled and tossed and looped around him at hypersonic velocities and would occasionally impact him. His personal warp field, or whatever armor he was wearing, was strong, but it was slower to maneuver. We had him in the classic fast, small, maneuverable fighters versus one big, powerful fighter type of air battle. Just like the MiGs versus the F-4s in Vietnam—Mike told me this. This was working well for us for a few seconds. We made several good hits on him and each time it seemed that his illumination dimmed a bit. But then the tide of the battle turned. Opolawn got wise to our three-dimensional battle tactics and took one dimension away from us.

He fought us to the surface, where the ground would limit our maneuverability. A second later I was staring closely at the Moon of Lumpeya City as I smacked into it. It was covered with civilization and I took out a good portion of ten city blocks. I rolled over and reversed back to Lumpeya City at full warp of the armor. It took about a second and a half to make it back to the fight.

Anson and Jim were holding their own with him and my abrupt return caught Opolawn off guard. I hammered him four kilometers straight down through the temple and into the crust of the planet itself. As we passed down through layer after layer of crust and water tables and limestone Opolawn finally stopped the downward momentum and flung me hard sideways a good half of a kilometer through the limestone bed. He shot upward to the surface only to be sandwiched by Anson and Jim.

I plowed up through the crust and surfaced through the center of the city, causing the large columns to topple in a couple of places. When those thousand-meter columns fell, they really fell!

"Where are you?" I called out.

"We're over the river by the landing strip again!" Jim said.

"And you ain't gonna believe this shit, but the air field is in perfect condition and I think I just saw Prawmitoos trying to make his way across to the little alien ship. Yeeow!!" Anson replied just as Opolawn hammered him.

"GIVE UP MONKEYS! YOU CANNOT DEFEAT ME!" the alien emperor's voice boomed through the comm.

"Anson's hit escape velocity, Steven! I need some help here!" Jim said. I could see a mountain a few hundred kilometers off to the east explode as Anson passed through it and continued on spaceward. Opolawn had hit him hard.

Jim and I tried to squeeze Opolawn several times but to no avail—he was too fast! We actually banged into each other a couple of times a little harder than I would've liked and the sky was filled with window-shattering sonic booms. Then I rushed Opolawn and stopped short with a feint that caused a shock wave to scatter debris in his face. Jim hammered him. Opolawn's larger, more sluggish bubble only moved a few kilometers. But it gave us a millisecond to breathe.

"I don't think we can force his warp field to overload, Jim!" I said.

"I think you're right, aaagggh!" Jim splashed and skipped through the ocean and traced out into orbit as he caught the full brunt of a lightning bolt from Opolawn.

"We have to get out of here, guys!" I yelled over the comm.

Opolawn and I were chasing each other around in circles until Anson poured up from the ocean and grabbed Opolawn by surprise. With a great sonic boom Anson forced him upward and upward and upward until I could see an explosion on the surface of the moon of Lumpeya City above. An outsider looking in at the battle might have thought that it looked like something from a comic book, like Superman's epic fight against Doomsday, or a video game like the Gladiator Sequence, or an episode of Dragonball Z 3D, but this was no game or comic book and there was no television magic required here. This was a battle of wills and alien technology and good old human stubbornness!

Jim settled down beside me.

"What kept you?" I asked.

"Them!" He pointed at more of Opolawn's fighters bearing in on us. Anson appeared from the top of them taking out several and scattering the rest. Opolawn wouldn't be far behind and we were getting overwhelmed and tired.

Mike, can you give me an edge on Opolawn somehow?

I can track him in your mind, Steven, but you aren't fast enough to outmaneuver him. Opolawn's computational skills are quite remarkable. I fear you are not capable of defeating him, Mike warned me.

Are you? I asked as we started back through the wheel with Opolawn, and now more of his fighters were entering the wheel as well.

What do you mean, Steven? Mike asked.

Could you take over my body and take him?

YES!

DO IT, MIKE!

Then it was a whirlwind even faster than I had been experiencing before. I was zigging and zagging and looping and diving and slamming faster than my mind could grasp. Once I noticed that Mike had pushed Anson and Jim to the ground. Jim grounded on the little Gray ship and toppled it over with Prawmitoos inside it. I think Mike did that on purpose.

Then he dropped below Opolawn and dodged his barrages. Interestingly enough, with each barrage of fire that Opolawn made it forced Jim and Anson to leap and dodge and move closer together with respect to each other. I was moving so fast and the stress was so great that occasionally I thought I heard tears and cracks in my body—but I was feeling no pain. The nanomachines may have been working. I wasn't sure if Mike was using all of his computational powers to fight Opolawn or not. But Mike kept pushing and pushing and pushing. He taunted Opolawn into following him to extreme altitude and then he turned back planetward. We zipped past each other head to head at near light speed. Had we collided I'm not sure the little warp field generator on my belt could've taken the stress. Fortunately, Mike swerved at the last nanosecond.

Opolawn stopped and reversed course in pursuit of us and he fired off more of his lightning bolts. A blinding barrage of Opolawn's fire flung Jim and Anson skipping back across the landing field and through the hangar doors of the temple. Mike dropped below Opolawn at maximum velocity and I thought I could feel my right hand going through my rear zip pocket, but it all happened in a matter of microseconds so I wasn't too sure about it. Mike dropped me continuously for a full two hundred milliseconds, several tens of kilometers below Opolawn, and shut off the warp field at about five hundred milliseconds before impacting the ground. If I hit the ground—or air—at that velocity I would have been turned to dust, but we were still in space so there was no atmosphere for me to slam into or breathe. But the warp field was only off a microsecond or less.

Then the freckle-faced soldier Gray's credit card that I had kept all this time turned on and the blue-white light flowed from it as if in slow motion. Mike hit the warp bubble again and I was holding the credit card above my head with the warp field and the beam of light formed as Mike stopped me cold on the surface of the planet just outside the hangar on the bank of the river. A ring of dust and debris was thrown up around me as the blue-white light flowed upward from the credit card and into Opolawn's trajectory. Opolawn was moving way too fast to stop and he flew right into the Gray confinement singularity beam. I stood in an Okinawan Karate Cat stance with my hands above my head, holding the confinement beam with my warp armor's field, and the blue-white light of the Gray confinement singularity surrounded Opolawn and then began to collapse. The blue-white ball of light rapidly vanished and then was gone. Opolawn was now trapped inside the forever-contracting singularity. How long would his warp field hold out—three or four millennia? Who knew, but if he didn't have a SuperAgent in there with him and if he didn't know how to use it he was doomed to be squished when his systems could no longer handle the crushing stress. Eventually, all parts would give out and Opolawn would die!

Mike let me rest for a second or two while he put the nanomachines to work on me. I still stood in the odd fighting pose at the edge of the river's bank. Then Mike gave my body back to me.

It's all yours, Steven. We beat him.

Mike, that sure was a lot like a memory of mine.

Yes, indeed, Steven. It was your memory and it was a great strategy.

Did you read my mind?

You said I could take over your body. Should I not have?

You did right, Mike. Let's get out of here.

Steven?

Yes, Mike, what is it?

Just one more thing . . . JACKIEZZ WINS!!! The image of little JackieZZ's overemphasized female video likeness flooded my mind.

"Thank you, JackieZZ, wherever you are!" I said.

Uh, Steven?

Yes, Mike?

We've got company so we'd better go.

Right, Mike. I rolled over Superman style and flew to the hangar. I rolled over on my back and could see more of the fighters converging on our position. I swooped down and caught Anson and Jim in my warp bubble while Mike shook hands and negotiated with the SuperAgent on the hangar's construction computer. As we started to shrink out and just before the warp bubble went opaque I caught a glimpse of Prawmitoos running into the hangar with the replica Himbroozya controller in his hand and then the bubble went black and we slipped through the quantum connection of the SuperAgent in the Lumpeya City hangar bay.

We immediately appeared inside the supply room just outside of Michelle in the Phoenix. I turned the warp bubble off and scanned the room. Jim and Anson were drenched in sweat and I was sure I looked the same. The three of us were exhausted.

"Did you fellows catch ol' Prawmitoos running after us just as we left?" I asked them.

"I saw him running across the field toward us just before you picked us up. Why?"

"Well, uh . . . he had the thing that goes Big Bang in his hands," I said.

"Then by all means, son, don't disappoint the little bastard. Go ahead and detonate it," Anson said with a huge—as he would put it—shit eatin' grin on his face.

"Should I? You wouldn't think any less of me would ya?" I laughed. "Mike, can you hear me?"

"Yes, Steven," Mike's voice came through the supply room speakers.

"Detonate the bomb," I said.

"Okay, Steven. It is done."

"That's it?" Jim asked.

"What did you expect, Jim? I mean, we have to be at least a light year or more away by now." Anson slugged him on the shoulder. "Hold on a minute. Tabitha, we are on board!" he said over the ships intercom.

"Yeehaw!" Tabitha let out a Texan hoot. I just knew that if she had had a cowgirl hat she would have slapped her knee with it, whirled it about in the air, and then tossed it. "Well, get up here. Y'all need to see this."

We rushed up to the bridge just in time to see the Lumpeya City star system dwindle out of range of the sensors of the Phoenix. 'Becca was fiddling with one of the display panels.

"Check this out," she said. "Michelle was able to hack into a system on the moon of Lumpeya City and got this image just a few seconds ago. Okay, run it Michelle."

"Okay, Rebecca," Michelle said.

An image of Lumpeya City with a resolution of about five kilometers per pixel appeared on the screen. A second or two of the image played through and then the screen went totally white, the image saturation compensated, and then the planet came back into view but this time with a giant mushroom cloud larger than the entire continent of North America. We only realized this because 'Becca zoomed out to a planet-sized view. Most of the mountain continent was totally destroyed. Lumpeya City was no more and the ocean was rolling in where the mountains once stood. The dust filled the sky and would soon blacken out the sun of the red devil's homeworld. That was fitting, I thought. It serves the pricks right for toying with us. I laughed and felt good about it.

"We were under some pretty hefty fire until that thing went off," Tabitha said. "Then all of our pursuers just dropped off and left us alone."

"What now?" Jim asked.

"Well, first I want to let Tatiana out of her cage," I said.

"Consider it done, son." Anson went and toggled a switch on a panel in front of Tabitha. Then into the intercom he said, "Tatiana Montana, please report to the bridge. Your husband is lost without you."

Tabitha punched Anson in the back. "Y'all don't get too cocky. We just smoked a lot of big red devils and one rather important little Gray. I would imagine their friends are gonna get pretty pissed at us when they figure out what happened."

Tatiana burst through the bridge door. "What's going on?"

I held up the picophage controller and waved it at her. "You're all mine now, baby!"