Chapter 13 - The Boarding Party
The heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed down the pitch-black corridor outside the command center, growing closer with every agonizing second. The emergency auxiliary power flickered weakly, casting long, distorted shadows across the panicked faces of the base personnel huddled near the consoles.
Lucas raised his sidearm, flicking off the safety with a sharp click that sounded deafening in the tense silence. He stepped in front of Sarah and Marcus, his eyes fixed on the smoke-filled threshold of the command room doors.
“Get back behind the console,” Lucas ordered quietly, his muscles coiled like a spring. “Whoever—or whatever—just came off that ship, they aren't coming to surrender.”
The footsteps stopped right at the entrance. A heavy silence descended over the room, broken only by the crackle of distant static and the deep, rhythmic hum of the massive destroyer anchored out in the glowing harbor.
Slowly, the thick white smoke drifting through the doorway parted.
A figure stepped into the dim amber emergency glow. He wore a dark Navy service dress uniform identical to Sarah’s, but his uniform was scorched, soaked in seawater, and covered in a fine layer of crystalline frost. His dark hair was slicked back, and his eyes were hollow, reflecting no light at all.
Sarah’s breath hitched. She lowered her weapon slightly, her mind struggling to process the impossible sight before her.
“Commander... Phibbs?” Sarah whispered, the words catching in her dry throat.
The figure standing in the doorway took a slow, heavy step forward. His face bore the exact same features as Sarah, down to the small scar near his left eyebrow—except for the nametag pinned to his chest. It read PHIBBS, but the letters were crusted with dried salt and aged metal decay.
“You took too long to open the door, Sarah,” the alternate Sarah spoke, her voice sounding multi-layered, as if spoken by a hundred people simultaneously. “We’ve been waiting twenty-six years in the dark.”
Marcus stepped out from behind Lucas, his posture rigid as he confronted the apparition from the alternate timeline.
“The bridge is sealed,” Marcus commanded, his voice carrying the iron weight of an admiral. “You have no authority here. Return to the anomaly.”
The alternate Sarah smiled, a chilling, humorless expression that didn't reach her dead, glassy eyes.
“Authority?” the alternate Sarah echoed, letting out a haunting, metallic laugh. “There is no authority in the loop, Marcus. There is only the debt that must be paid. And the debt requires a sacrifice.”
Before Lucas could squeeze the trigger of his weapon, the alternate Sarah raised a small, pulsing containment core—the exact prototype Sarah had locked away in the vault years ago—and slammed it down onto the nearest terminal.
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A blinding flash of violet light instantly filled the command center, freezing everyone in their tracks as the entire room dissolved into a roaring vortex of spatial static.
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