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Welcome to Arrival : Ruptures , the story of a world plagued by constant trans-dimensional ruptures, where your suggestions of your culture, food, traditions and ideas can take place, so can you.
—
Meltral
RIC Central
She opened her eyes with a dry groan escaping her lips.
She flinched away from the light held to her eyes. It felt like sharp needles inside her skull for a moment. "Everything looks good. How are you feeling, lieutenant?"
"Numb," she said. A permanent veil of numbness spread across her face. She was quick to remember the interrogation. Since she wasn't in pain, copious amounts of painkillers must be involved.
"We did have to give you a lot of painkillers. On the bright side, there are no complications and you will be fine," the doctor, a colonel, said, confirming her sluggish thoughts.
"Feeling ready for visitors?" the doctor asked.
She grunted, closing her eyes once. "I'll take that as a yes," he said, heading to the door. She heard a flurry of footsteps and a warm, familiar hand grasped hers. She opened her eyes, vision blurry from the tears. The warm peach-colored hair and the warm hand grasping her fingers were all she needed to know.
"Hey, Mom," she said. She couldn't see the silent tears on her face, but she knew her mother was crying.
"Come on, don't cry. I'm fine." Even though she uttered those words, she didn't feel like it.
"You can barely speak. You are not fine," her mother said, voice barely above a whisper.
"Just the hazards of the job," she tried to joke.
Her mother's tone turned to steel in an instant. "Don't downplay your injuries, young lady."
"How did I get rescued?" she asked. The doctor was out to give them privacy. She could speak freely.
As much as her face and ribs allowed it, of course.
"The Adventurer saved you and the others," she said. The doctor was already out, but it was best not to speak about these matters outside the safety of their home.
"Thairon is outside. Do you want me to let him in?" Yumiko asked. He had chosen to stay outside to give Yumiko and her daughter a moment together.
"Sure," she said.
Yumiko left her daughter's side, returning just as quickly with their guest in tow. "Sorry it took a bit to find you," he said first thing.
"Good morning to you too."
He huffed, amused. "Afternoon, actually."
"Any idea what exactly happened?" she asked. The rupture had acted anomalously; she found herself in an alien cell with a broken arm and, of course, the interrogation.
"It was something from the other side. I sent my brothers to investigate," he said. They were infiltrating the compound where the RIC troops had been stranded near.
"When can you get her out?" Thairon asked.
Yumiko, who was gently wiping her daughter's eyes, stopped. "Why?"
"I can heal her in hours. She won't have to spend an entire month bedridden." The broken arm, the ribs—none of them were wounds that would heal in a short time.
"That sounds wonderful actually," she said. Her back was itching, and speaking was a chore right now.
"I'll ask the doctors later."
Thairon raised his hand for a second, excusing himself to the corner of the room. He was talking to someone, either to that AI of his or his brothers.
—
"A portal device?" he asked, going over the scans his brothers took.
"Seems they are—to no one's surprise—at war with a coalition led by humanity. This gate is supposed to open to the heart of the coalition. Weirdly enough, it keeps getting directed elsewhere," Sky said, reading from the translated notes.
Thairon sighed. "To us."
"Yep."
The data, partly stolen from the aliens and partly acquired by scanning the portal device, flooded his brain. "The scans show that the device fractured a micro rupture into something that won't close by itself. If they turn it on again, it will be worse," he said.
"We can destroy it," Kael said, stretching his arms.
He went through the alien notes. A part stood out about the anomalous disappearance of the harmonic energy waves. "No. I need you to find me the plans for the device. Recalibrating the adaptive harmonics should cause the gate to collapse in itself while sealing the rupture."
—
Unknown Planet
"You heard him, it's all yours," Skyler said, laying down on the roof. Kael was the obvious choice to steal the plans from wherever they were held. In the meantime, he could nap.
Kael considered kicking him on the knee before running away. He turned around, jumping off the roof without doing it. The complex was a fortress of dark grey, concrete-like stone. Walls were so thick he sometimes got lost in them. The surface was just a square, single-story building with the gate inside it.
The real prize lay in the subterranean floors.
Upon arriving on the planet, they had begun to gather information. The A'xlarah had colonized this planet at the edge of their empire, right on the opposite side of the front lines. The war was over their expansionist nature. Humanity was leading a coalition against them, and by all evidence, they were winning.
The gate was a plant to change the tide of the war.
He phased through the ground, targeting the deepest part of the facility. He hadn't gone there because he thought destroying the circular, metallic gate would be the end of this.
He saw snippets of the floors as he free-fell. Security check at the top, then personnel quarters, and several floors reserved for the theoretical part—unless they had a different reason for looking at screens surrounding a smaller gate. He saw rows of materials in quick succession. Then it blurred too much, and he had to stop before going through the final floor.
The room was the largest he had seen so far. Cables as wide as his waist rose from a blocky machine, probably a computer. One researcher, with the same white skin the rest of his race carried, was standing before it, wearing a blue, form-fitting uniform.
He approached the alien from behind, tapping on his left shoulder while moving to the right. The researcher turned to his left with a guttural yelp, shoulders visibly sagging when he saw no one. He turned ahead, only to come face to face with an intruder.
The said intruder's face, entirely dark due to the hood attached to his clothing, suddenly burst into that of a monster. A green, leathery face and a maw filled with rows of sharp teeth screamed so loud his world shook.
He froze on the spot and fell like a log.
"Man, that's so fun," Kael chuckled to himself, moving towards the computer. "Nax, think you can hack this thing?"
"Not as it is. Its computational power is beyond mine. I need you to sever the highlighted data cables to cripple it," Nax said, using the nanobots in Kael's bloodstream to paint the targets.
He held his fingers like a gun, shooting at the indicated cables. Partially phased out, the cables fell down one by one. "Done," he said, blowing at his finger, which had smoke coming out of it.
"Plug me in," Nax said. A blue cable, no thicker than a lace, extended from his bracelet. The head touched the data port. White, glowing tendrils spread out from it, accessing the databases without the computer putting resistance.
Minutes passed by before Nax was done.
"Done, let's beat it."
Kael opened a portal back to the roof.
—
Skyler was still there, napping in the safety bubble Kael had created.
"Get up; I got it," he said.
Sky grumbled as he rose to his feet. "And what does our chief genius in charge suggest?"
"Give me a second; it's still in translation."
They waited inside the illusion bubble, supported by the bracelets making them invisible to the scanners.
"Right. Inside the machine, there is a circle of hollow synthetic crystals. That's what they use for the adaptive harmonics. Sky, have you felt anything weird from the gate?" Thairon asked.
He nodded. "It uses gravity, right?"
"Yes. What I need you to do is to reverse the curve the crystals create. That should be more than enough to collapse the gate in itself."
Skyler got up from where he was lying. He dusted his clothes as Kael created a portal beneath the two, dropping down right next to the gate, in the middle of a swarm of soldiers.
"Hi?" Sky said, stomping his feet. An invisible wave spread out, pushing the soldiers upwards. They floated for a moment, frozen in surprise. The gravity reversed its hold, and they found themselves stuck to the ceiling, hard.
Kael opened another portal, covering the entire ceiling, and sent the soldiers high in the sky.
"Best teamwork ever," Sky said, holding his fist out. Kael bumped it, grinning beneath his illusion.
He laid his hand on the circular device, feeling the thrum of the gravity, and got to work.
The enemy was quick to arrive, though.
They swarmed through the door in record time. Kael snapped his fingers, creating a portal and weaving an illusion over it.
"What did you do?" Sky asked, turning his head back while his focus was still on the gate.
"Put an illusion in front of the portal. They think they are surrounding us now."
"Hah!" he laughed sharply, pointing a finger at his brother. Kael did the same with a snigger, the wavelengths of their brains matching for a moment.
"You two should hurry up. They are going to bombard this place from orbit," Nax said, listening to the enemy comms through the main computer beneath. The research data and prototypes were already sent to off-planet sites. The enemy decided destroying this place was worth it so the gate wouldn't fall into enemy hands.
"I thought they needed the gate to change the course of the war?"
"This isn't the only one they have, but it is the only one that concerns us."
"I'm done here," Sky said, pulling his hand away.
"They severed the controls. You'll need to start it from here," Thairon warned. "One of you should deal with the ship in the meantime."
"This one's mine." He blasted off, shattering the roof apart.
Kael walked to the small console. The symbols blurred for a moment before they morphed into letters and words he recognized. "What do I do?"
—
He actually pitied the planet. It was a lush world with plenty of forests and foliage, the kind of place he enjoyed taking walks in. Now, he would have to destroy the ship, possibly harming the planet in the process.
The ship itself was a big one. Four hundred meters long at least, it plunged through the clouds like a pure white spear, its guns already warming up. He raised his hands slowly, gripping the ship in a well of gravity.
It swerved, engines burning brighter to compensate.
He pulled it down, trying to ground the ship before it could fire. He could maybe save the forest too. The ship was starting to lose the tug of war, craning towards the surface.
And then there was an explosion in the rear.
The ship began to fall instantly, all thrust gone. The culprit showed itself to be another ship, smaller in size but built like a bird of prey. The blue vessel ignored everything else, beelining for the complex.
"Nax?" he asked. Was the enemy of his enemy his friend or not?
"Coalition special forces. Quite a pain in the ass for the A'xlarah. Their trajectory suggests an attack run. You should stop them."
He raised his hands once more. The ship came to a full stop in an instant. As before, its engines flared. The pilot's attempt to push through the invisible force stopping the ship didn't work. He lowered it to the surface, keeping it there. He didn't want to harm them, but they wouldn't get to the complex either.
At least not by ship.
A diverse group of individuals, two humans and four aliens of varying sizes wearing blue, form-fitting armor, left the ship. They charged towards the complex, undeterred.
He pursed his lips, impressed, and stopped the hold of gravity on them. The soldiers didn't panic, further increasing his respect. It all disappeared when they shot at him. He dodged the yellow bolts for a while. When they didn't stop, he reversed the gravitational curve.
They slammed to the ground, creating small craters, unable to get up.
He pressed his bracelet, calling his brother. "How is it going over there?"
"It's initializing. We just need to wait for a minute or so."
He nodded, turning to the soldiers. "Can you translate my words to them?"
"Yes, go ahead," Nax said. As long as the gate was destroyed, he didn't care what Sky intended to do.
He floated down, standing next to the incapacitated soldiers. "Sorry about this, but the gate has to be destroyed in a specific manner."
"Who even are you?" one of the aliens asked. He was half as tall as him and was actually forcing himself off the ground. He was even more different than the discount space elves. His head was shaped like a pear with an upward crescent jaw.
"Not important. If you agree to stand down, I'll let you guys stand."
"Our task is…" he continued, but Sky interrupted him.
"Did you know they have more of these gates out there? This one's about to be toast. I'd go and search for the rest if I were you," he explained. He floated away but not before asking Nax to send what data they took to the soldiers. He didn't truly know who was good or evil in this case—history had proven war was never that cut and dry.
He just wasn't about to sympathize with the cunts who had tortured soldiers of RIC.
A whistle brought his attention back to the complex. Kael was there, waving at him with a portal open. He appeared next to him, throwing an arm around his neck. They walked through without even looking back.
Seconds later, the surface floor of the complex was launched upwards as dozens of boulders. Everything stood still for a moment before the debris was pulled down at astonishing speeds. A dark veil spread, destroying everything in its path, leaving a crater that could house the A'xlarah ship with room to spare.
—
Haven
Meltral
RIC Central Base Hospital
"What happened?" Tomoe asked as Thairon chuckled. The screens projected out of his bracelet disappeared, but a satisfied smile stayed on his face.
"Let's talk later; your friends are here," he said as Nax alerted him of several figures approaching the room.
There was a knock on the door. "Come in," said Tomoe. Four soldiers in slacks entered the room, trying to be quiet. The woman at the front was carrying a basket. A white ribbon with 'May It All Be In the Past Soon,' written on it, covered several boxes.
"Come in guys," Tomoe said, inviting them closer.
"I'm so glad to see you're awake," Silene said, placing the basket on the ground next to the bed.
Thairon tried to step out, but Tomoe shook her head.
—
In the next chapter:
"How are your bruises?" Silene asked. She didn't know how the aliens figured out Tomoe was their commander. Anyone else might not have been able to hold on for so long.
"They are numb. You tell me," her friend said in a teasing manner, but it came out as a grunt. Her swollen face, the constant leak of tears, and the cast made it difficult to take her words the way they were said.
She held Tomoe's hand, squeezing it to assure her. "You're tough; you'll be up on your feet before you know about it."
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