by Hodden, TE
1999
By
TE HODDEN
Contents
1999
The Honour Guard
Prologue: What Lays Beyond The Horizon
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Part One: Omens And Ghosts
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Part Two: Secrets and Origins
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Part Three: We Are Legion
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Part Four: The Eleventh Hour
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The Honour Guard
Scimitar: When FBI agent Rock Harris was left for dead, an experimental mix of Alchemy and Science brought him back from the brink, faster, stronger, and with a supernatural endurance. Armed with a jet pack, crossbow, and adaptive armour, he has worn the mantle of the Scimitar since the early 1960s.
Phoebe: Before marrying Rock Harris, Phoebe was the thief, confidence trickster, blackmailer and smuggler known as Privateer. She always considered herself a Robin Hood type, waging her unique kind of war against organised crime, the immoral, or the exploitative. Now (more or less) reformed, she uses her many talents to support her husband, as an investigator.
Praetorian: When Professor CL Laurence discovered a message from the stars, it was a warning, from a dying world, of the Legion who invaded them. The message also carried instructions to build the weapon that might yet offer hope. That weapon was a boy, Matthew Driver. Raised in military boarding schools, and under the watchful eye of Laurence, Driver was trained to be the perfect soldier, but after some years of service, chose instead to join the Honour Guard, as New York’s protector.
Osprey: When Barney Mitchell crossed paths with an alternate version of himself from another dimension, he found himself being chased by alien bounty hunters, and empathically bonded with a spacesuit full of laser weapons. He joined the Honour Guard in the mid 1970s, in search of adventure and glory.
Yeoman: Charlie Gull has been chosen by the Ancestors to adopt the mantle of the Yeoman and police the borders and covenants between the Earth and the realms of magic. An intuitive warlock, his magic is powered by his imagination rather than through learned spells and rites.
Scarlet Knight: Catherine Willow is the fourth member of her family to carry the Singularity Spear. Time and space warp around her, letting her appear to move at the ‘speed of impossibility’. A medical doctor by training, Catherine always expected her brother to inherit the Spear, but his reign as the third Scarlet Knight was cut tragically short.
Melody: Since her parents were slain in the line of duty, Melisa Willow has been raised by her aunt Catherine, and trained in preparation of inheriting the Singularity Spear. Like her mother, Melody is a natural psychic and empath. Afraid that she will not do justice to the legacy of her family, Melody has struggled to step out of their shadow, to forger her own identity.
Prologue: What Lays Beyond The Horizon
September 1996
The Warner Expedition continues to gather
Archaeological evidence of a pre-human city at
The Transantarctic Mountains.
*
The mysterious signal that has interfered with satellite TV
Signals has been traced to an Unidentified Object
In orbit around Jupiter.
*
Eloise Croft, the First Daughter, has been kidnapped.
She has been missing for seventy two hours.
In Florida, Rock Harris (Codename Scimitar) is
Investigating a promising lead…
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Rock Harris powered down his flight pack, and dropped from the clouds, skimming the treetops, and landing on the thick, fortified wall that surrounded the manor house. The camouflage of his Scimitar armour shifted to match his surroundings, the pattern bleeding into ink dark shades of charcoal and blue. His visor peeled away the shadows, painting the world around him in the gold and sepia tones of night-vision, the body heat of the guards glowing a vivid scarlet.
Nobody cried out, or raised the alarm.
Harris let out a slow breath, and drew his alchemical crossbow, from the holster at his hip. The arms folded out, and grew taut as a stun bolt loaded into the breach. He tapped the side of his visor, to open a comm-link. “I’m in position.”
Phoebe, his wife answered with a sigh. “I can see that. I just need a few moments.”
Harris kept a careful watch on the grounds of the manor. The foul weather meant that most the guards were lurking in shelter, staying put. There was only one unlucky woman patrolling the walls. There was one on the balcony of the second floor, two smoking cigarettes under the archway by the garage, and two by the swimming pool. Each was armed with a stubby sub-machine gun.
On the second floor, at the back corner, there was a bedroom whose small window had been fitted with metal shutters, locked on the outside with padlocks.
Beneath his faceless helmet, sleek backpack, and armoured greatcoat, Harris was a lean, gnarled, man, his face weathered and scuffed by a long career, his charcoal grey hair and beard streaked with silver. His eyes were cold and hard as flint.
The roaming guard turned the corner, and started trudging his way.
“Phoebe,” he growled, his voice like grit on a millstone, “I don’t have a few moments.”
On the other end of the communications link, there was a cacophony of mouse clicks and keystro
kes. Phoebe huffed. “I can rush, or I can get it right. Which would you rather?”
The guard was close enough for Harris to hear the thudding bassline of the music on her headphones.
He took aim with the crossbow, easing the pressure from the trigger.
The lights in the manor suddenly blinked out. The CCTV cameras scattered about the house all dipped to the ground, the red light under their lens blinking out. There was howl of feedback, and the roving guard tried her radio, with no success.
Harris smiled, and fired his flight pack, sailing over the garden to the rooftop.
The guard span on her toes, but was too late.
Harris squeezed the trigger and hit her with a stun bolt. She dropped silently, face down in the grass, for a long sleep. Another bolt loaded into the breach.
Harris sprinted across the rooftop, taking aim at the burly guard on the balcony. He fired the stun bolt, and whispered through the air, striking the guard in the back.
Instantly the guard dropped to his knees, his arms slack at his side, his eyes out of focus.
Another bolt loaded into the breach of the crossbow.
Harris crouched, and as the guards by the garage glanced his way, he popped a rapid salvo of bolts, sending them to their dreams. He spun on his heels, and took down the pair by the pool, with another two pulls of the trigger.
Harris jumped down to the balcony, and stepped into the office.
“I’m in,” Harris whispered.
“And?” Phoebe chided him gently.
“You were late,” Harris whispered, stepping over to the door out of the office. He paused, to check the coast was clear, and stepped out, his crossbow held ready.
“Huh,” Phoebe said, in a very particular way.
“What?” Harris growled.
“Oh,” Phoebe said, with ersatz sweetness. “Nothing.”
“Right…” Harris hissed, pressing himself to the wall, and glancing around the corner.
There were three guards stood outside the corner bedroom, the one with the bars. The door had been bolted and padlocked from the outside. The guards were shifting nervously, fidgeting with their guns.
“It wouldn’t hurt you know,” Phoebe said, her tone sharpening. “The occasional please, or thank you, would go a long way.”
Harris thumbed the dial on the side of his crossbow. The breach swallowed the stun bolt, and replaced it with a bolt with a lightning bolt. The shaft of the bodkin bolt contained a glass phial, in which forks of lightning danced and flickered. He ducked around the corner, and fired the bolt.
The bolt struck the door. The glass phial shattered, and forks of lightning flashed out, leapfrogging between the guards, making them buck and writhe, dropping their guns, their mouths wide in silent screams.
After a few dazzlingly bright seconds, the lightning died away, and all three guards lay on the floor, flopping around like fish drowning in air.
“Is this because you missed the book club?” Harris demanded, thumbing the dial on his crossbow to thermal bolts.
“This is because we always miss the book club!” Phoebe snapped.
Harris stepped into the corridor, and shot the padlocks with thermal bolts. They melted away in fountains of bright orange sparks. He strode down the corridor. One of the thugs tried to reach for a gun. Harris stamped down on the guard’s face, knocking him out cold. “Well excuse me. You didn’t even like the damned book!”
“I like my friends!” Phoebe huffed. “I like wine, and cheese, and getting out this damned basement. We always find time to go bowling, or have a barbecue with your friends.”
“You like my friends!” Harris kicked the bedroom door off its hinges. “Don’t you?”
“I like my friends too,” Phoebe said. “And… what the Hell?”
“Yeah.” Harris stepped into the bedroom, and crouched by the bedside. “I was about to ask that.”
Eloise Croft writhed and squirmed on the bed. Her wrists were cuffed to the bedframe, the flesh raw from her struggles. Her sleeveless tee and pyjama shorts were soaked with sweat. Her hair was dank and limp. Her teeth were grinding together, and her veins were swollen and black. A drip had been plugged into one of her arms, the skin around the needle was red and blistering. Her thermal readings were dangerously high.
Harris holstered his crossbow, and took the laser scalpel from his utility belt, slicing the cuffs away. “Show me the route to the nearest hospital, and warn them I am incoming.”
“I know!” Phoebe squawked, with a flurry of keystrokes. “I’m working on it!”
Harris tapped open another channel of his link. “Agent Fry?”
“Here,” a gruff voice answered. It belonged to Special Agent in Charge Richard Fry, of the FBI.
“Sir, I have the package secured. I will making an immediate medical evacuation. I have neutralised the threats, if you want to collect them.”
“I very much do!” The senior agent promised.
Harris ripped the drip from the neck of the teenager, and scooped her over his shoulder. He backed away, and blasted the window bars with a high explosive bolt. The bars fell away, crashing down onto the pool. Harris didn’t wait for the smoke to clear. He leapt from the window, and fired his flight pack, soaring away into the sky. “Phoebe!”
“On it!” She squeaked, as the navigation data popped into his view.
FBI trucks rammed their way through the gates of the manor, as Agents ran to take the mobsters into custody.
Harris smiled. “Thank you. I am… much obliged.”
“And I love you too,” Phoebe promised.
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Twenty million kilometres above Jupiter, Barney Mitchell growled as the bleeping alarm woke him from his contented slumber. He sat up a little, spilling the bag of cheese puffs that had been resting on his chest. He was laying back as far as the pilot’s chair would go, his boots resting on the helm controls.
He glanced at the navigation screen, groaned with frustration, and kicked the button with his heel to mute the alarm.
At the front of the flight deck, the dweeby English kid was still sat cross legged by the tall, curving windows, looking out over the Bumblebee’s blunted nose, watching the maelstrom storms of the gas giant.
The Dweeb glanced over his shoulder. “Was that anything important?”
“Nah.” Barney pulled his cap down over his eyes, and settled back for another snooze. “We are just passing through the orbit of the outer moons.”
The Dweeb cocked his head. “Does that mean we are getting close?”
“Relatively,” Barney admitted, his patience waning. “Matt should be meeting us soon, but it will be another few hours until we reach the inner orbit, and find the…whatever it is.”
“Ah.” The dweeb said, going back to watching the giant.
Barney closed his eyes, settled his breath, and let himself sink down into sleep.
After twenty years in the Honour Guard, the novelty of space travel (and Barney’s patience for those who revelled in it) had grown threadbare, and lost its colour. Barney was in his forties, but like to think that he could pass for late twenties (maybe in a bar, with the right lighting). He had an athletic frame, long hair tied back into a loose tail, and a fuzz of stubble. He wore a red and white varsity style jacket over his Osprey bodysuit.
A couple of decades ago, as a much younger man, Barney had crossed paths with… well… another him. A Barney Mitchell from another Earth, an alternate dimension, who was some kind of super-villain. There were some alien bounty hunters, who were more interested in taking Barney in dead, than alive, and thought the only way to be sure, was to put a bullet in both Barneys.
The other Barney died, and… things got a little weird. The suit was determined to protect Barney from the other bounty hunters, and what started as desperate survival became a full time career with the Honour Guard.
The Bumblebee was a workhorse spaceship, squat, round, and heavily armoured against the dangers of deep space. It looked more like a
whale than a bee, if you squinted and used just enough imagination.
The Dweeb was in awe of it.
His name was Charlie Gull. He was maybe eighteen, or nineteen, and looked like he should have been chaining himself to a tree somewhere, to protest a bypass. He was rangy, rubbery and scruffy, with a mop of untamed curls, an olive drab army surplus shirt, baggy cargo trousers, and bare feet. He hadn’t been with the Honour Guard long, but the way Barney understood it, the guy had been wandering around England, fighting monsters pretty much the whole time he should have been in school.
Matthew had vouched for the kid, which went a long way. When Matthew “The Praetorian” Driver gave you one of his wholesome, lopsided smiles, and stared at you with those dark, earnest, eyes, people tended to listen.
The theory went along the lines that the Honour Guard would help the kid find monsters and wayward magic, so he can do his job, and in return he would use his abilities to help the Honour Guard with other stuff.
Like… for example… investigating the alien-something-or-other orbiting Jupiter, that was frying weather satellites and interfering with TV signals.
There was another alert chime from the controls. This time it was the merry tone of the comm-link. Barney sat up, sending his bag of snacks flying, as he hurried to straighten his hat, and dust the crumbs off his jacket. “Crap. Crap…” He tapped open the link. “This is Bumblebee One.”
Matthew’s lopsided grin filled the screen. He was a boy-next-door handsome. “Hey there!”
“Praetorian,” Barney said, tapping at the controls. “Are we ready to take a closer look at whatever this thing is?”
There was a flash of light, as Matthew flew past the shuttle, pulling alongside the shuttle, matching their speed and heading. He was tall, and physically powerful, with taut muscles and strong arms, but he wore it like a dancer, giving an impression of being willowy. He wore a white and silver hooded gilet, over a set of quilted black overalls, and thick leather gauntlets.
He was surrounded by a mist of ethereal silver light, that flickered and danced like flames.
“Sure,” Matthew said, placing a hand against the window of the shuttle. “Why not?”
The Dweeb rose to his feet, and gawped like a fish. “He isn’t in a spacesuit.”
Barney chuckled. “No.”
“Or a spaceship,” the Dweeb added.
