Chapter 24

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The 'real world' clock read 00:43.124 (Shah had added the millisecond-counter), while the 'bubble clock' ticked over normally, faithfully, and, crucially, in seconds.

Sonic had finished her story. She and Shah prepared to do what came next: sending Shah into the port to pick up from where she had abruptly left off, and to figure out exactly what in the heck was going on. Oh, and to keep an eye on Rusty too, that was important. In fact, that was kind of the point. Even better, they detected the kid was back online – much to their collective relief – at about the 42-second point (in real world terms, that was). As such, getting into Anomaly was now very-much top priority.

Shah stood in front of the full-sized port. He had reset it. The thick steel ring was now eight feet in diameter, the inner edges glowing with an eldritch orange plasma that writhed and twisted. But the rest of the ring was clear. No watery reflections, no spinning vortex, not even a sound to accompany what actually sat, invisible, in the middle of the ring. That aspect of the port was quite boring. When Shah and Sonic first fired it up, after the Anomaly tracker went berserk a real-world minute ago, they were hoping for proper fireworks and zappity-zaps, maybe a Theremin-like caterwaul to go with it. Glowing orange edges were cool and all, but still, couldn't they have had a Stargate-like vertical swimming pool?

Sonic was sitting at the terminal, examining the data as it scrolled in glowing numbers in front of her. "Still three hundred, Shah," she said. "You good?"

Shah held his gun up. "I'm good," he said. He had synthed his own Light Railgun, known colloquially as an 'L-Rig', or just 'Rig' for short ('L' was for light; these weapons came in four sizes: light, medium, heavy, and 'you-kidding-me?-we-need-to-mount-this-on-a-spaceship'). Initially, he'd planned to take Sonic's Slammer because it was already synthed, but there was a hitch: when he approached the full-sized port, it started fizzing and collapsing, while the tracker on the console began to blat alarmingly.

Turned out Sonic wasn't the only thing 'covered in Anomaly'.

Therefore, he made his own gun, a weapon that Sonic had dubbed 'el arma grande'. The weapon looked like a cross between a rifle and a tuning fork. The stock and action portions were similar to Sonic's Slammer (no ejection port or significant markings), but instead of a barrel at the front, there were two metal prongs about an inch apart and a foot-and-a-half long. The weapon did not use an electron vortex like the Slammer. Instead, this weapon induced a massive electromagnetic potential across the 'tuning fork' portion (the 'barrel', if you will) to launch projectiles at velocities up to ten percent of the speed of light. He'd sensibly dialed that speed back a bit, down to Mach 10 (or so he thought; he would soon learn to double-check such settings), but it was not a weapon to be messed with.

He also put a strap on it so he could carry it over his shoulder as needed, and attached a scope to the weapon for good measure. The scope was nothing either he or Sonic considered too fancy, but would have left most weapons specialists of the 21st century slack-jawed in disbelief. It had an optical zoom of 10,000x, and was capable of spread-spectrum electromagnetic detection: UV, light, infra-red, microwave, radio, etcetera, etcetera. It also featured a wavelength-adjustable laser-imager, because why the heck not. The laser would also allow Shah to measure distance to anything with nanometer-scale accuracy. Or burn a hole through said 'anything', in which case, the accuracy didn't matter so much. There was also the question of whether the Universe of Anomaly allowed such physics, but that was about to be answered.

The Rig also made more sense than Sonic's Slammer in another way. After Sonic told him about how the brutes and those around her reacted to the thundering of her weapon, Shah figured a proper noise-maker was required. The Rig practically ripped the air apart when it was fired, sounding like a thunderstorm on steroids. If the creatures there had eardrums, they would need to kiss them goodbye if he opened fire in close proximity. To be fair, if he were aiming the gun at them, their eardrums would be the least of their worries.

And if you were wondering what would happen to Shah's own ears? You may have noticed that Sonic and Shah (and others we shall meet sometime later, probably in other books, sorry) are not quite 'ordinary' teenagers, and this distinction includes, among many other things, their eardrums.

In addition to the Rig, Shah had synthed his own one-five, and it dangled from a little attachment around his waist. He also made an extra two ammunition clips for the Rig, which he had inverted and clamped onto each side of the existing magazine. This way he had a full hundred-and-twenty-thousand rounds total. But, like Sonic, he did not intend to fire a single shot to kill unless he absolutely had to. He (and Sonic and everyone else in their crew) was not a pacifist – this wasn't the twenty-fourth century of Star Trek after all – but killing needlessly was never kosher, regardless of time or place. Or Universe.

"You good," Sonic repeated, mostly to herself. Then to Shah: "Do it, amigo."

Shah took a deep breath.

"Wait!" Sonic called out.

Shah exhaled. "What?"

Sonic moved away from the terminal in a distortion-field-induced lurch, and came toward him, raising one fist. Shah raised his own free hand, clenched it into a fist, and they bumped. "Good luck, hombre," Sonic said.

"Yah, thanks," he replied. "Godspeed to me, hey?"

"You're gonna have fun, Shah. And make sure Rusty is alright."

"I will."

Sonic returned to the terminal. She scanned the input for the 'activate' button, and put her hand over it. Looked up at the port. Pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

But nothing was supposed to happen. The port was very much alive, regardless of how it looked. "Okay, now do it, amigo," Sonic said to Shah.

Shah took his second anticipatory breath of the day. "Abra-cadabra," he said out loud, and stepped into the ring.

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