by Hodden, TE
Melisa closed her eyes and reached out, letting her awareness spread out over the valley. She could feel the uncomfortable itch of the background pollution, but she could feel scattered flames of human thought too, the overspill of emotion and energy from living minds, stained with exhaustion, but steeled with duty.
“What about the guards?” Melisa asked.
Lionheart shook his head. “We can’t see any.”
“But they are there,” Melisa promised.
“Stealth fields,” Barney said. “The background radiation is blurring the tell-tale signs.”
Lionheart grimaced. “How many?”
“Nine,” Melisa said, “in three groups of three. In that house, by that garage, and in the burger place.”
Lionheart thought a moment. “They have good visibility. They’ve made it hard to sneak up on them, but… I think we can get close enough to get the drop on them.”
Angel looked thoughtful. “Can we get past them unnoticed?”
Lionheart looked at her. “It won’t be easy, but nor is it impossible. Why?”
Melisa laughed as she understood. “Because they can only be out there for a few hours.”
“Or less,” Lionheart said, his eyes lighting up as he caught on. “Probably less, if they are making a habit out of it. Accumulated issues. That sort of thing.”
Harris tapped at his visor. “We get in place, and lay low. When they change the guard, the SEAL teams take the soldiers, and we go storm the bunker, in two groups, hedging our bets which door opens.” He paused. “If these are the same guys I met with Elois…”
Lionheart glanced at the SEALs. “They’ll have a fight on their hands, but they can handle it.”
He ducked over to Commander Beihn, the SEAL team leader, and began describing the plan.
*
Their journey through Welles Fields was painfully slow, crouched low, moving from cover to cover, creeping through the ruins, through the charred and scorched shells of buildings, through an imitation of a town, avoiding the view of the guards, and of the cameras.
Eventually Melisa was crouched in the basement of the civic building, watching the vaulted door to the bunker beneath the town, with Angel and Harris.
A presence appeared suddenly in her awareness beyond the doors.
“Somebody is coming,” she whispered.
Harris tapped his visor. “We have movement.”
They backed away into cover, and waited.
The door hissed open, and six men in hazard suits, like bulbous space suits, waddled past.
They watched them go.
The door mechanism hissed.
Melisa, Harris and Angel ran for the door, and ducked inside, as the door swung closed. Within the bunker, there was an immediate cacophony of souls.
“We’re in,” Harris reported.
“Us too,” Lionheart confirmed.
“I feel…” Melisa concentrated. “Twenty people.”
“Understood,” Harris said, drawing his crossbow.
They crept down a corridor, and paused at a doorway. There was a guard room, where three men, and three women, all in blood red uniforms and white body armour, were watching banks of CCTV monitors. One of them glanced up and stared at Melisa.
“Int¬” He started to shout, before all of them, and their computer consoles, were thrown against the back wall by a tidal wave of kinetic energy.
Melisa glanced at Angel. She couldn’t see past the veil, but she was pretty sure the alien was smiling.
Harris pressed himself into a doorway, as an armed guard rounded the corner.
Melisa stepped into the corridor. “Hello! Would you mind being distracted just a second?”
The guard raised his shotgun, in the same instant a stun bolt detonated on the side of his head. Melisa caught him, as he fell.
They moved on, and met Osprey and Captain Lionheart coming the other way. Lionheart and Harris greeted each other with curt nods. They approached the next door. Melisa placed her hand against it. “Three more people in there.” She pointed to where she could feel the presences.
Lionheart counted down, and opened the door. Barney and Harris ducked in, Harris firing a stun bolt, and Barney firing a percussive bolt from each hand.
Beyond the door was a long, deep chamber in which the two men, and one woman, were on the upper gantry, overseeing the machines that loaded dino-droid drones into assault pods, ready to be fired at a city.
The goons in their red uniforms and white armour went down in a split second, bouncing off the railing, and falling onto their platform.
The dino-droids were skeletal robots, their chromed framework uncannily like the fossils of predatory bi-pedal dinosaurs now augmented with chainsaw teeth, and laser eyes. There were a lot more than three of them, closer to a hundred.
They turned to look at Barney, as one.
Barney flexed his hands, reconfiguring his armour to fresh weapons. “Uh oh.”
“Yeah,” Harris agreed.
Angel stepped past them, and touched her hood. Inside her helmet, her gemstone glowed.
Lionheart pointed to the door on the far side. “The servers must be over there.”
“Right,” Melisa agreed.
“We’ll handle them,” Lionheart promised.
Melisa steeled herself, and took a deep breath. “Okay. I can’t die here, because I need to be alive to come back from the future.” She rocked her neck to loosen up. “Okay! I can do this.”
She took a run up, sprinted forwards, and leapt over the railing, dropping down onto the loading floor, and sprinted across the floor for the far door.
Around her, a battle raged.
Angel sent drones flying, scattering them with her force projections.
Harris was running along the gantry, dodging laser and firing lightning bolts into the assault pods.
Barney was dancing through the battle, ducking and weaving attacks from lasers and shrieking chainsaw teeth, blasting and smashing the droids with his ever changing weaponry.
Captain Lionheart rushed head first into the enemy, tackling them like a quarterback, and hurling them around like a wrestler.
Melisa dropped and rolled as lasers flashed overhead, leapt over a set of snapping jaws and shoved her way through the far doors. Feeling as she went, for a presence, and finding none.
She landed in a room full of server stacks that chattered and whispered away, as a huge display tracked the status of nuclear weapons scattered across sixteen countries (including some which had never admitted to owning any). There were plans for strikes by the drones, and dino-droids.
“Okay,” Melisa said, trying not to think about the battle raging next door. “Let’s get you shut down.” She looked around the server stacks. The engineer’s console was on a desk, but there were no keyboards or displays. “Okay, that’s weird…”
“I don’t need them,” somebody said from the shadows in the corner of the room.
Melisa tenses. “Who’s there?”
A young woman stepped out of the shadows. She was maybe seventeen or eighteen years old, gap toothed and plain, dressed in a plain tracksuit and scuffed sneakers, her scalp shaven to make room for the bulky cluster of cybernetics that covered her head. An armoured cable tethered here to one of the server banks.
She was holding a gun, it pointed unwavering at Melisa.
“Zero Vector?” Melissa asked.
The young woman nodded, and took the slack from the trigger. “I won’t let you stop me. I won’t let you ruin everything.”
11000
Catherine followed Brandi Summers through the Palace of Mars.
Summers was walking in a half daze, clutching her head, and constantly stopping to touch, or and caress the carved marble decorations. The staff floated beside her, its spherical crown full of light, swirling and bubbling, in an ever-changing pattern of colours. Summers was muttering to it, more in the Martian tongue than English.
Summers hurried down the steps into the wide
throne room.
Catherine slipped into the warp, just into the shallows, just deep enough to run on the wall and get in front of Summers. “Hey.”
Summers blinked. “No. She’s a friend.”
Catherine put a hand on Summer’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Summers nodded. “Sorry, the Choir are noisy, and I’m still learning to focus on a single voice.”
“The Choir?” Catherine asked.
“The survivors.” Summers gripped the staff. “Orphan sucked them from the crystal, and I thought they were dead, but they’ve just been kind of… blended…” She looked at the orb atop the staff, and her expression turned sad. “They are gone, but not gone. A phantom of them still exists. Their memories. Their intentions. They want… they need me to do something for them.”
“Like they told you how to kill Orphan?”
Summers looked away. “I did not… I just… I trapped him in his old body. I have to make sure he remains there, I also have to make sure that the Martian technology can not be used by those who would turn them into weapons. I am going to… put them to a better use. The Martians have died, but for them, it is a sacred duty to see Mars lives on. They still have so much to teach us.”
Catherine smiled. “Doctor¬”
“Brandi.”
“Brandi,” Catherine said, cupping Summer’s cheek. “You have suffered an overwhelming psionic surge, and… I want to make sure you are still okay. Do you want to come to New York? Or the Moon? I have friends who can run some tests, and…”
Summers touched the hand on her cheek. Her fingers were cold as ice. “I am changing. I am becoming part of the Choir, and the Choir is becoming part of me. It is going to be okay. I’m going to be okay. This is… wonderful.” She lifted the hand away, smiled brightly, and ran to the throne, and hopped into the seat. “Show me the display please.”
The staff bobbed after her, and set itself into a part of the throne.
The psionic circuits inlaid throughout the throne room glowed with power, and a spherical hologram, a Martian globe, shimmered into being above the floor.
“It will take years,” Summers said, “maybe even decades, but in time the atmosphere will be renewed, and the world seeded with life. The scars of war will fade, and something new will rise in its place. Fields of produce, orchards, forests…” She rubbed her head. “The Husks will protect the tombs, and the ruins, but there will be room for me to build. For… humanity to come, as long as they are willing to live by the rules, to respect and remember. I think… it will me job to ensure they do.”
Catherine laughed. “Brandi Summers, Empress of Mars?”
Brandi shook her head. “I will not take that title.” She looked at the staff. “Queen? That sounds a little… pompous. I am your Caretaker.” She giggled and flushed. “Well, let’s worry about one thing at a time, eh?”
Catherine ran her fingers through the hologram. “What do they say?”
Brandi hid her face. “That if I am the Caretaker, you would make a good queen.”
“I have no doubt.”
“No… they mean my queen. As in… by marriage.”
Catherine felt like she was teetering on a cliff edge. She took the plunge. “Well, tell them we’ll start with dinner and a show, and see where it goes.” She chewed her lip. “If you like? When you have time… Maybe?”
Brandi rubbed her head. “Yes?”
Catherine stepped through the hologram. “So, where do you begin?”
Brandi closed her eyes and touched the staff.
The floor rumbled with a low vibration, as distant thunder rumbled through the palace.
“That’s it,” Summers said, quietly. “The engines are running.”
Catherine nodded. “And you are staying here?”
“For now,” Summers agreed. “I have work to do. But… I’ll be free Wednesday?”
“For dinner and a movie?” Catherine grinned. “In Washington?”
Summers nodded. “Say… Eight? At the farm?”
Catherine’s earpiece buzzed. “Yes?”
“Hey,” Matthew said. “The… pyramids are all lit up, and… working.”
“Yeah…” Catherine said. “I think it’s time to go home.”
*
The transportation platform spat them back into the barn, in a flash of arcing lightning.
Matthew took Catherine’s arm. “Are you okay?”
“Butterflies,” Catherine said, pointing at her chest.
“Yeah…” Matthew smiled. “Even after all these years, transportation platforms take my tummy by surprise.”
“No.” Catherine looked at him. “I got a date.”
“Oh.” Matthew rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s… been a while.”
Catherine nodded. “I know! But she smiled at me, and there was… a whole moment… and…”
Matthew took her arm. “It’s going to be fine. What’s the worst that can happen?”
They followed the UN team, and the Marines out of the barn and into the staging ground.
Matthew frowned, and looked around. “Where’s the Manta? Where’s Barney?” He tapped his earpiece. “Mitchell, what is going on?”
11001
Charlie plunged down, out of the soup thick swamp waters, and into the dreams they contained. He hit the open air with the jolt of a belly-flop, and landed on the rooftop in a roll, coming up to a crouch.
His heart sank as he recognised the memory, the rooftop of the condemned tenement building in the Mission district San Francisco, on a blustery afternoon. Tilda remembered it as being greyer, and dirtier than he did, with deeper shadows, and less sunlight.
The sounds of a fight rang out across the rooftop.
Charlie ran across the roof, and scurried quickly up the iron ladder to the topmost level of the roof.
There was the schism-way, the hairline fracture in the air, just as he remembered, and the Ether Converter, the bulky cylindrical device mounted on a tripod, powered by the three thick cables, that was warbling away, distorting the air around it as it tore the schism-way open.
And there was Scratch Wormwood, fighting with Tilda.
Wormwood was angular and pointed, in a dark suit and long overcoat. His hair was clipped short to show off his tattoos, and he wore mirrored glasses to disguise the orbs of flint that replaced his eyeballs. He had a canine smile of diamond teeth. He was armed, as he had been on that night, with a pair of broad bladed falchions.
Tilda was… wrong. She was the version of herself who persisted in the afterlife, rather than the shrivelled crone who had fought and died that night. She was at her prime, hacking and slashing at her enemy with her sickles, in a savage fury.
Charlie’s younger self was nowhere to be seen.
Tilda drove Wormwood into retreat, letting the momentum of the fight carry her. “You broke into my home! You killed my family! You stole my journals! I trusted you! I taught you! And you murdered them!”
Wormwoods heels touched the edge of the rooftop.
“No!” Charlie shouted, running for her. “Don’t!”
Tilda drove the tip of her sickle between Wormwood’s ribs, with a hacking blow, and forced it in deep. His eyes widened, and blood dribbled over his lips. Tilda kicked him off the roof, and he screamed all the way down to the streets.
She turned and looked at Charlie, a satisfied smile on her lips.
Reality stuttered, like a film jumping a frame.
And suddenly Wormwood was back on the roof, adjusting the power on his Ether Converter. The schism-way crackled, as it grew wide and wider.
Tilda rolled her shoulders, and clicked her neck. “Wormwood!”
He stopped and faced her, drawing his falchions.
Charlie grabbed Tilda’s shoulders. “Tilda, listen to me!”
She tore herself free, and ran at Wormwood with a war cry, throwing herself into the fight, spinning into a lighting fast series of strikes, that Wormwood met with parries and blocks, as they circled the roo
ftop.
Charlie closed his eyes, and concentrated on his memories.
*
Until a few weeks before this memory he had managed to cling to some threads of normality, despite the strangeness that had always surrounded his grandmother, despite the ghosts and gremlins that had always been invaded his home (despite his mother’s best efforts).
Mum had no interest in magic, and no talent for it. Her life and career had lain on a different path. Instead Tilda had chosen to train a talented magician called Ashley Thornwood to be the next generation of Yeoman. He was a powerful magic, but had taken, and failed, the Trials three times. Tilda had refused to give up on him.
Until he tried to cheat, to increase his power by exposing himself to the raw energies of the elemental planes. It had made changed him in ways nobody could have predicted. Quickly he had hungered for more power, at any cost, and became obsessed with finding a path back to the elemental planes.
When Tilda would not share what she knew of the schism-ways, he broke into the house, and stole her journals. Charlie’s parents had been in his way.
The memory burned, like looking at the sun. He couldn’t look at them directly.
So, he concentrated on what he did know.
Tilda found him, and offered him a way through the pain and grief, a purpose. To take the Trials, prove himself a Yeoman, to find Thornwood, and bring him to justice. The trail had ended here, in San Francisco. On the rooftop.
Thornwood had reinvented himself as Scratch Wormwood. He had found the schism-way, and planned to crack it open so wide that the elemental plain would have spilled into the Earth’s reality, consuming half of North America, and much of the ocean. Wormwood would have become all powerful, and anybody else caught in the blast would have been burned from existence.
The fight had been the first and only time Charlie had drawn his weapon, a weighted chain, in anger. The plan had been for him to draw Wormwood away, while Tilda shut down the Ether Converter.
