by Ramy Vance
Kravis stirred quietly in his sleep, and Sarah looked away from her notes. Sarah loved how peaceful Kravis looked when he was sleeping. Like nothing could hurt him.
Sarah put her notes away and finished up the small glass of wine on the table. Then she undressed and crawled into bed with Kravis. The gnome’s eyes opened a fraction, and he stared dreamily at Sarah. “You’re back,” he whispered.
Sarah kissed him softly. “Shush, go back to sleep, we can talk in the morning.”
Kravis murmured something unintelligible and was snoring within a few minutes. It wasn’t long before Sarah was dreaming alongside him.
Chapter Three
HQ was buzzing. Once Myrddin received Sarah’s briefing, he’d put everyone on high alert. Sarah’s message might not have had the urgency that another human would have brought to the impending attack, but Myrddin could read between the lines. Sarah had been out in the field for years. Her understanding of imminent danger was a little skewed.
Anabelle was rushing around, trying to take care of as much as she could before the main briefing. Myrddin had loaded her up with different responsibilities. Part of her regretted wanting to be more involved with the war efforts. It nearly tripled her paperwork, and there was always someone she had to talk to about something.
If only everything was as glamorous as she hoped.
At the same time, Anabelle couldn’t have been happier that, when the alarm went off around HQ, she was being directed toward combat instead of some stuffy senator’s dinner party. And it was nice that she only had to answer to Myrddin. There were a lot of things Anabelle liked, and being in charge was one of them.
First things first, she had to get her small team together. Abby, Roy, and maybe Creon. The little goblin was smart as hell, and another brain couldn’t be a bad thing. She wanted everyone to be up to date with what was going on. No one needed secondhand information.
Anabelle knocked on Abby’s door. When she received no answer, she knocked again, shouting Abby’s name. “You better not be napping in there!” she yelled. “Can’t you hear the alarm? We got a big problem going on right now.”
There was still no answer. Anabelle checked around the corner to see if anyone was coming. For some reason, she felt very embarrassed about going into Abby’s room. It reminded her of any time one of her teachers had forced their way into her room. The only reason Anabelle went along to check was that her teachers had always had good reason to be suspicious.
The lights in the room were off. Anabelle fumbled around, looking for the light switch, and then clicked it on.
Abby was lying on the floor, part of her body transformed into the sleek obsidian metal Anabelle had seen before. The rest was frail and human. Her nose was bleeding, and she didn’t move when Anabelle called her name.
The elf rushed over to her and propped her up. “Abby, speak to me! Abby!”
Suddenly the girl’s body went rigid, as though an electrical pulse had just run through it. Then she relaxed, her eyes opening slowly, the obsidian metal draining away so that she looked like a regular human girl. She stared up at Anabelle. “What are you doing here?” she asked, sounding half asleep.
“You were passed out on the floor. What the hell happened? Are you okay?”
Abby looked around the room as she tried to wake herself up. “I’m not sure yet,” Abby admitted. “Can you take me to the med lab?”
“Are you sick?”
“No, just want to… You know, I’ll explain it all later. Need to check something quick. Please?”
Anabelle couldn’t say no to Abby. She was worried about the girl. Abby kept putting herself under more and more stress. She didn’t understand that sometimes you failed. And Abby was taking it hard that they’d not been able to get Terra back home. It was a lot to expect of a teenager. Maybe too much.
Anabelle helped Abby to her feet and then scooped the girl up into her arms. As she carried her to the medbay, Abby drifted in and out of sleep, sometimes speaking a little, often in a few languages Anabelle hadn’t known Abby spoke. When they arrived at the medbay, Anabelle lay the girl on one of the beds and stepped away as Abby’s eyes snapped open.
“Anyone in here?” Abby called.
The medbay was empty besides Abby and Anabelle. “Good,” she said as she leaned over to the computer beside her bed. The ends of her fingertips turned black with the nanobots and snaked out like tendrils, burrowing into the computer.
The ceiling above the bed opened, and a cat-scanner descended upon Abby, wrapping itself around the bed and her head. Before Anabelle could say anything, the room was filled with the loud humming of the scanner working. When the hum died, the scanner unwrapped itself and withdrew into the ceiling.
Abby sat up and pulled the computer over to her, reading the results.
Anabelle sat on the bed next to her. “Okay, first off, I know you don’t have clearance to do that. Secondly, when the hell did you get a degree in neuroscience? That shouldn’t make any more sense to you than me.”
Abby looked at Anabelle, smiling sweetly, her eyes looking different than Anabelle had ever seen. There seemed to be more color and something else behind her eyes. “I integrated Martin into my brain,” she said softly. “Just wanted to make sure I didn’t have a stroke or something when I passed out.”
Anabelle wasn’t certain she understood what Abby had said, but she thought she got the gist: she had done something reckless and possibly stupid. “Why’d you do that?” the elf asked. “Doesn’t sound like… Actually, I have no idea what the hell it sounds like.”
“It was the next step. Nanobots for my body. Martin was already partially there. Now there’s more of him in my head. I can think faster. I can know more. I’ll be able to help better.”
Anabelle slipped her arm around the girl’s shoulder. “Abby, you’re doing great. You don’t have to do any better.”
Abby shook her head. “No, that’s not true. Terra is still not back on Earth. I need to do better.”
There were a lot of things Anabelle wanted to say to Abby, but she couldn’t settle on which one. She went with the one that she felt the most. “I’m proud of you.”
“Really? You aren’t mad or anything?”
“This is war. We need to take risks. All of us. Everyone makes sacrifices. I’m proud that you’re the kind of person who doesn’t need to be pushed into it. Now, if your brain isn’t going to start hemorrhaging, we need to find Roy and Creon and get to the briefing.”
Abby stood, still a little wobbly. “Briefing for what?”
“Dark Gates are opening up on Earth. We need to close them.”
Creon, Abby, Anabelle, and Roy met Myrddin in his study. As usual, the room was different from the last time they had seen it. The long dining room table was gone, as were the comfortable tweed chairs. Instead, there was only a large holoprojector similar to the ones in the R&D labs.
Once everyone arrived, Myrddin waved his hands casually, conjuring a host of seats that surrounded the holoprojector.
Abby felt like Myrddin got rid of his furniture on a regular basis just to have an excuse to use magic. Then she wondered why such a powerful wizard spent all of his time working behind the scenes instead of being out there fighting.
As though Myrddin could read Abby’s mind, he looked right at her and asked, “Will you be staying behind on this mission or going out into the field?”
She was caught off-guard at being addressed directly and cleared her throat as she thought. It would probably be safer for her to stay at the base. There was still no telling what had happened to her body since Martin had been integrated. It was already odd enough that Martin hadn’t reached out to her at all. She had expected a lot more chatter from him.
Myrddin was still waiting for an answer. Abby looked at Anabelle, who was noncommittal. “Guess I’ll be going with y’all,” she answered. “Seems like this one is kinda a big deal.”
Myrddin nodded as he waved his hand, turning on the holoprojec
tor. “A few hours ago, I received information from Sarah. She informed me that three locations with three Dark Gates at each will be opening in different areas in the United States. Each Gate is extremely far from the other. Obviously, they’ve realized that our aim is closing any that opens, so they’ve placed the gates as far away from each other as possible in an attempt to keep us from working together.”
A map of the United States opened. There were three blinking lights. One in New York, another in Washington DC, and one in what looked like Death Valley. “As you can see, it would be impossible for any of you to aid the other. Each of you will command a squad and—”
Abby interrupted Myrddin, her head swimming from his last sentence. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘command a squad?’”
Myrddin calmly turned to the girl. “I mean that you will have soldiers under your command and will be responsible for giving orders and closing the Gate. I know you do not have any experience leading a squad or a team. Trust me. But right now is not the time for us all to voice our insecurities. Either you are going to lead a squad, or you will remain behind and see how else you can help.”
Abby nodded, humiliated by having spoken up so quickly. She was just about to start beating herself up when Anabelle grabbed her hand, squeezing it tightly as she smiled at Abby. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We all gotta start somewhere.”
Myrddin continued explaining the plan. It was simple enough. There hadn’t been adequate time to begin working on the rest of the information Sarah had sent over, but Myrddin detailed it for the team regardless.
The part that differentiated the Dark Gate on the gnomish planet had been found. Sarah was transporting it back to HQ the next day, but she had already sent over the schematics for R&D to work with. Creon sat in on the briefing, and since he was HQ support, he assured Myrddin that he would begin building his own version of the piece. From there, he could reverse-engineer a Gate similar to the Dark Gate the orcs had engineered from the human hadron collider.
When Myrddin finished speaking, silence hung over the meeting. It felt like something more needed to be said. Or perhaps something was being hidden. “Is that all?” Abby asked.
Myrddin shook his head. “All that I know for sure, but I have theories. Each attack from a Dark Gate has gotten larger and larger. At first, they seemed like recon excursions, things of that sort, but the last one at the amusement park? Bringing a wyrm to Earth. I fear these gates may have just as much of a force behind them, but I cannot be certain. That is why I am worried.”
Roy and Anabelle scoffed. Roy scratched his stubble and said, “You? Worried? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you worried before.”
“Because I am very rarely worried. But this? It’s a decent strategy from an enemy who only grows more and more strategic. If you three were able to stay together, I wouldn’t be worried. But this…this unsettles me.”
For the first time since arriving at HQ, Abby thought Myrddin seemed human. The stress he was experiencing brought him down to her level. He wasn’t some all-knowing god. He was flesh and blood, just like Abby. Or at least like she used to be.
Anabelle spoke up. “So, we have no idea how large the invasion party is going to be, and we hardly have any troops. I mean, Blackwell and his team are always ready to go, and Naota’s pretty much finished his training. If you add the defense team here at HQ, that might put us at one hundred bodies. Can you pull any from Middang3ard?”
“In theory. But there would be no time. But you don’t need to worry about soldiers. Due to your aggressive campaign to show humans all of Terra’s struggles, we’ve had a surge in volunteers. More than three hundred soldiers have been transferred from the French, Nigerian, and United States military branches. Most of them have already finished our initial training. Each of you will have a squad composed of a mixture of HQ soldiers and those who have recently transferred. All are combat-ready, will not be relying on our exosuits, other than our soldiers, and will be armed with our latest weapons and defensive capabilities.”
Anabelle laughed sarcastically. “What are you so worried about then? This is a better setup than we’ve had going into any of these missions before.”
Myrddin’s brow darkened as he turned to face the crew. “I do not like the unknown,” he said softly.
Chapter Four
HQ’s hangars were busy. It seemed like everyone was pouring in and out, trying to find out where they were needed. Scientists rushed about under the supervision of Creon, calibrating the hadron collider. This was the largest teleportation HQ had ever attempted, and the fact that the coordinates weren’t remotely close to each other wasn’t making it any easier.
Creon looked stressed but energized. Abby watched him from afar. She was up in the rafters, watching the rest of HQ work. If Creon needed her, he would comm. She wasn’t worried about Creon, though. He knew his shit. She was worried about the squad she was supposed to meet with in a little bit. They had already been briefed, and Blackwell was going to be traveling with her. All in all, it wasn’t the worst introduction to leadership. That said, it still didn’t feel right.
Abby hung out in the rafters, looking for Roy. Her eyes hyper-focused, and she realized she was capable of seeing details most humans couldn’t. Before the nanobots, she wouldn’t have been able to see Roy from her current distance. Now, she could practically count the hairs on his chin.
Roy was putting the final touches on his mech. The rest of his squad stood around watching him work. They were obviously starstruck. Most of the squad, if not all of them, were composed of the few soldiers trained to use the exosuits Abby had upgraded. It only made sense they would be excited to serve alongside Roy. He was something of a legend as far as mech riders went. Roy epitomized what Middang3ard HQ was all about. She could see why Anabelle was so attracted to him.
There was still a slight sting to admitting that, but Abby knew better than to hold onto stupid or childish things. Anabelle was a couple hundred years old, and more like her teacher. There wasn’t the slightest possibility there. Besides, she was just happy to have someone like the elf so close to her. Crushes eventually died, especially once you stopped paying hourly attention to them.
Speaking of Anabelle, she wondered what the elf was up to right now. Abby assumed she would have hidden after briefing her squad. She didn’t seem like the kind of person to join in on the military pomp that Roy was obviously reveling in.
Abby was surprised to see her sitting down with her squad, going over the mission. The elf’s face was energetic, animated. She looked like she was in her element. If there was anyone Abby wanted to be like, it was Anabelle.
“How long are you planning on staying up here?” a voice asked from the shadows.
Abby whirled, her hand covering with nanobots, her palm forming into a plasma cannon. Every movement happened instinctively.
Myrddin emerged from the shadows, balancing easily on the girder separating him from Abby. “You don’t have to shoot me if you don’t want to talk.” He came to her side. “I just thought you might want some company.”
Abby gave Myrddin the side-eye, then relaxed and sat beside him. “Really? Doesn’t seem like your thing.”
“I must keep up appearances. Running something like HQ isn’t easy, and that’s not even thinking about the war effort. All of the meetings, convincing people, arguing, fighting…you quickly learn to appreciate moments when you can speak with someone candidly.”
“Is that what we’re doing right now?”
“Unless you prefer for me to be more businesslike.”
Abby shook her head as she watched the soldiers preparing beneath her. “No, no. This is fine. How come you’re up here?”
Myrddin conjured a bag of beef jerky into his hands. He took out a few pieces and handed the bag to Abby. “Thought you might want the company. And I’ve been a little bit worried about you, to be honest.”
Abby took a piece of jerky. It was rough and salty. Reminded her of home. “Why worri
ed?”
“I may not call a lot of attention to things, but I am very aware of your experiments. Martin disappeared for some time yesterday. It was as if he had died and vanished. I was worried that your integration of him into your own mind didn’t go as you both had planned.”
Abby felt her body go cold all over. Even though Myrddin didn’t sound upset, she was mortified that he had known what she had been doing all along. She didn’t even think about how he knew. Something about being found out made her feel childish.
“My mind is very receptive,” Myrddin said, answering Abby’s question. “I know nearly everything that goes on in HQ. Granted, I try to give people their privacy. Also, it helps when having conversations. But your plans were too interesting to ignore.”
“You aren’t pissed off?”
Myrddin shook his head as he took the bag of jerky from Abby and grabbed a few more pieces. “I had a fairly good grasp of the kind of person you might turn out to be. The job wasn’t offered lightly. You seemed fiercely independent. Extremely secretive, and in need of a purpose. I don’t intend to curb any of those attributes. Unless something threatens the safety of this facility, you have as much freedom as anyone else. And trust me, you won’t be in trouble the first time you unwittingly put this place in danger. You should ask Creon about the battle bots he once tried to build.”
Abby had heard Creon referencing those bots earlier in the week. A couple of the other scientists still teased him about whatever happened. “You ever lead missions?” Abby asked.
Myrddin nodded as he passed the bag back to Abby. “A very long time ago,” he answered. “I found my talents lay more in organization. Planning. I simply don’t have the mind for that kind of leadership. You might find it hard to believe, but I crack under too much pressure. Administration? That’s a pressure I can deal with.”
