~ Chapter Six ~
Things Just Got
Even More Complicated
The assembled B Team stared at the
screen. Gasps, cries and a couple of shrieks sounded as they saw what I saw.
I reached fur my telephone and dialled C.J.'s direct
line. He answered on the furst ring. "Basil?" was all he said.
Taking a breath to steady myself, I stood up straight and growled
into the telephone. "Mew lied to me C.J."
There was a long pause and I wasn't sure if C.J. had hung up
on me but then I heard his all to familiar wurld-weary sigh. "Don't tell me," he replied in a
rather jaded tone. "Mew fast forwarded the video didn't mew!" Not a
question, just a point of fact. "And now mew know what I've been keeping
from mew fur all this time."
"How long have mew had that confounded clock?" I
snarled.
"Eight years."
"Mew told me 5 years ago that my old team..." I
couldn't say the wurds, but I gave myself a mental shake and organised my
thoughts. "That... my old team... were wiped out on a covert mission in
the Congo trying to save the gorillas and mew said to me; Basil, if mew had
been with them they'd all still be here!" I was shaking so bad, my anger
boiled, rage surged through me and I screamed into the telephone. "MEW
FILTHY LOW-LIFE LYING SACK OF CAMEL EXCREMENT! MEW TOLD ME THEY WERE DEAD AND
IT WAS MY FAULT! MEW DIDN'T TELL ME THAT THEY'D BEEN TRAPPED IN THAT FLUFFING
EVEEEEL DIMENSION ALL THIS TIME..." I took a breath through gritted teeth. "AND MEW PUT ALL THAT GUILT ON ME FUR ALL THESE YEARS!"
Humphrey put a calming paw on my shoulder and it was then I
saw the looks of abject horror on The B Teams faces. I closed my eyes tight-shut and
turned my back on them as I continued. "When I get in that fluffing place
and retrieve Fudge and my old team, if they're still alive plus anypurrdy else that mew cowardly top-level freakers from the F.I.B have sent in there I'm coming fur mew... there won't be
a single place in the known universe where mew'll be safe!"
I hung the phone up and took another gulp of my medicinal Nip
Scotch and focused on my breathing until I peeled myself off the ceiling and
came back down to floor level.
"Dude," Smooch said softly. "Don't get
excited, we can fix this."
"Yeah," Parsley agreed. "Mew've got the most
formidable fighting force on the planet Basil and If we can't save them..."
Humphrey cut him off. "We can save them, we can save
them all."
"HOOAH!" Smooch, Parsley and Humphrey paw-bumped.
"We're the freaking B Team and there ain't no-purrdy
like us, that can do what we do and do it again!" Humphrey cheered raising
morale. "We're the greatest, the
fastest, the bestest, the most armed, the most dangerous and skilled team of
elite kitty commando's this time space continu-nomnom and this universe has
effur seen, HOOAH!"
I looked at my team and knew they were right. "HOOAH!" I shouted. "Let's go do this!"
~ Chapter Seven ~
Lock'n'Load
Fudge had been in that eveel
dimension one hour and 43 minutes when we reconvened outside BDR 1.
"Status on supplies?" I asked Parsley as we stood
outside the sealed doors of BDR 1.
"Basil dude, we've got the hamburgler with the
lot!" he grinned passing me my tactical vest and belt.
I stared at it and said. "But where is
effurything?" I held up the belt and vest, turning them around but no
visible supplies were there.
"Ah, well Humphrey and I had a bit of a convo and
decided that we wouldn't be able to take anything in there other than what we
could carry."
I nodded.
"So Humphrey suggested that we use the miniaturizing
ray gun to make all the equipment, guns, ammo, extra weapons, surplus just
in-case weapons and food plus water," Parsley explained. "And
anything else we may need to fit in here."
He pointed at all the pockets on the tactical vest. "Dude, mew've basically got half the
bunkers weapons and ammo in your top right pocket. Food and water in your top left
pocket..."
"Really?" I asked.
"Yep really."
"So why haven't we done this shrinky-make stuff really
small before?" I queried. "Could have saved a fortune on extra
baggage charges on our last furmilly vay-cay when we made the mistake of
travelling via conventional means!"
"Dude, Humphrey had hidden the ray gun in his secret
safe as he didn't want it falling into the wrong paws but now he's back, we're
all good to get our mittens on it!" he laughed.
"Nice, so how many ray guns are there?" I asked.
"Only 3 right now, Humphrey has the original and he's
just made two more in the 3D printer which he's calibrating and loading up the
software on now, he's leaving the printer to make more while we're gone and Snowie
will have the blueprint and upload codes to finish the oppurration, so if we
need more she can send them through the clock in a trojan cat."
"But how do we know that it'll wurk right in that
dimension?" I wondered. "What's to say that it doesn't wurk and then
we're stuck with no weapons or anything?"
"Ah that’s the clever bit," Parsley replied.
"Humphrey reckons that as the camera feed from the last agent was ok that
the basic rules of physics apply there too, well if it didn't there'd be chaos
and we'd neffur have seen the footage."
"What mew're really saying is, we're going to wing
it?" I laughed bitterly.
Parsley nodded. "Don't we always?"
Humphrey appeared wearing his tactical vest. "I just
added 6 ATVs to my inside pocket should we need transport."
"Won't they be too noisy?" I asked.
"Nope," Humphrey grinned. "I've made them
fully electric, self-charging and they're completely silent running, plus I
added a rather nifty feature, there's a new button on the top of the speedo,
hit that and mew're instantly inside an invisible force field, cool huh? Did I say how much I love 3D printers!"
"Furry cool dude, and can mew still travel at speed
while invisible?"
"Dude, mew really have to ask!" Humphrey laughed.
"Just checking!" I grinned back.
Amber, Pandora and Smooch appeared. "Are we ready
dudes?" Smooch asked as he strapped another full sized holstered Glock to
his tactical belt [that made 4, he likes to be purrpared].
Snowie and Posie appeared and handed out our latest comms
units, plus back-up headsets. Then we were each given a small tracking chip,
plus spares. I stuck my tracking chip to
my chest and Snowie said. "Basil mew're now active, hopefully I'll be able
to monitor your progress through the 3D render of the labyrinth, and mew'll all
be able to keep tabs on each other with your iPaw's. I've uploaded all the new software so if
anyone gets lost mew'll be able to track them easily enough and all the iPaws
are synced so mew all have exactly the same info all the time."
I held up my left paw and hit my iPaw screen with my right
claw, it pinged into life and the small screen depicted 5 pulsing dots plus my
own making 6. Each dot had an initial on
it so it was easy to see who was who, though Pandora and Parsley had P1 and P2. "Nice Snowie, mew did a great
job!" I said and suddenly realised how much I'd missed all my older
fursibs offur the last year. "What about the 3D map?"
"Oh just double tap the screen and it will change to
map view, and as mew travel through the maze, the software will remap should
our interpretation be a little off. So
essentially the existing map will become more comprehensive as mew traverse the
labyrinth and it will keep the exact route should mew need to back track at
all," she said. "I also added an extra feature where it will log any
unusual activity at a precise point or place, so the further mew travel the
more info it collects and the better mew'll be able to deal with whateffur is
in that heinous place!"
"Jeez, mew think of effurything don't mew!" I
smiled at my older sisfur.
"One of us has too!" she smiled grimly thinking about those heinous nightmares again.
Posie appeared and asked. “Are mew guys ready to launch?”
I nodded gravely. “Mew take care of Horice ok and we’ll be
back before mew even know we’re gone!” I gave her a tight smile, and she gently
patted my arm and replied. “Basil if anypurrdy can do this, it's mew and the
guys and gurls of course!”
I took a deep breath and turned to face my team. “Dudes and
dudettes, it is time, are mew ready?”
“HOOAH!” came the collective reply.
Then I shouted with all the gusto I could muster. “ARE MEW
READY?”
“HOOAH!” came the raucous reply.
I felt happier at the second response, as team moral and
confidence are key to a successful mission. We went in fur the obligatory group paw-bump and then broke apart,
though in all honesty I could feel the tension rising faster than the SpaceX
rocket launch.
Snowie suddenly said. “Oh and before I furget mew’ve all got
camera’s placed in the top button of the tactical vests and don’t wurry about
battery life, Humphrey has installed his new Kinetic Battery, so they’ll last
fureffur.”
I gave her a nod and then had an offurwhelming impulse to
hug her tightly, letting her go I hugged Posie next... something was making my
fur bristle in ways that I couldn’t explain and I knew that this was not going
to be like any other rescue mission we’d been of before.
“Open the doors and let’s go get Fudge!” I said resolutely.
>^.^<
We stepped into BD1 and the doors
swooshed closed behind us, I could see Snowie and Posie’s wurried expressions
through the glass portals and I gave them a nod, I could feel my legs trembling
and I gave myself a mental shake before I said. “Alrighty then, how the fluff
do we get this confounded, ugly clock to do its thing?”
Pandora, Amber, Parsley, Smooch and Humphrey all shrugged
their shoulders and then Smooch said. “Why don’t mew try knocking on the door?”
"Why don't mew knock?" I shot back.
“Oh no dude, that honour is all yours!” he replied and then
pulled on his full-face mask.
‘Typical,’ I thought as I edged towards the ticking
monstrosity and pulled my own mask down.
I gave my team a cursory glance and then rapped lightly on the clock
door.
Nothing happened. I
rapped harder and still nothing happened, by this time I could feel the
adrenaline surge and I squared up the clock and snarled. “Mew wurthless,
fluffin’ piece of cack!” I growled.
“Call yourself an inter-dimensional door, I’ve seen better doors in a public
lavatory!”
I was just about to ask fur a
crow-bar to prise the door open when purple smoke began to billow from the
eveel thing, then the door burst wide open; I saw inside and my entire being
lurched side-ways as though the ground beneath my paws just melted away.
BD1 was full of smoke in seconds and I shouted. “Dudes here
we go!”
The eveel gnarled hand reached into our dimension and
opened wide, claw-tipped fingers out-stretched. It was the strangest sensation as I felt my body being pulled towards
the hand and I glanced around to see my team being drawn towards it too. If I could liken it to anything, it was like
we were iron filings being drawn towards a powerful magnet.
Amber started to scream as did Pandora, Smooch pulled one of
his guns. I could feel Parsley and Humphrey’s energy change from moderately
chilled to all out action as the hand began to close around us all.
I was so thankful to
be wearing a full visor mask as without I’m sure I would have been gagging and
puking at this stage. The purple smoke was thick and acrid and although the
mask kept most of the smoke out, I did get a sniff; it was like death and all
manner of really unpleasant things, that in all honesty mew don’t want to think
about.
The hand had us all in a vice like grip as we were lifted
off the floor and pulled into the clock. Time and space started to do really weird things and it felt like a
roller coaster ride of doom, and one that would neffur end. Yet in the next breath I felt myself falling
and falling and falling, then I hit something hard and began to slide down a
greasy, stinking wall.