The Never Army

by Hodges, T. Ellery

  Heyer chose one of the gateways closest to him on the model. “To illustrate, let us say he gives fifteen Ferox a stone tied to this gateway. The man whose device is tied to those stones will have to destroy all fifteen to exit.”

  “What happens if he only breaks one stone?” Paige asked.

  Heyer took a long breath. “He’ll reappear inside The Never at the same place he first entered. The good news is he’ll return in whatever condition he originally arrived. Any injuries he may have incurred will be as though they never happened.”

  “He’ll respawn?” Hayden asked. “Like in a video game?”

  While Heyer frowned at Hayden, Mr. Clean chimed in, “It’s an apt analogy.”

  “For any of our soldiers to exit, one of three things must occur. He destroys any stones tied to his gate. Malkier’s armies retreat and close the conduit on their side. At which point breaking any stone inside will bring our people out.”

  “Ferox don’t retreat,” Jonathan said.

  Heyer nodded. “Yes, it is not an option we should depend on. Which brings us to the third, we take control of the gates on the other side.”

  “If a man was facing being trapped in The Never, he could step through the conduit and cross over to The Feroxian Plane,” Anthony said. “It would be a death sentence. I mean, assuming he didn’t walk right into Ferox forces he’d be trading trapped in The Never for trapped on the Feroxian Plane.”

  Anthony saw the looks he was getting. “Said it was an option, not that it was a good one.”

  “Um, maybe this is obvious,” Collin said. “But if inanimate objects can go either way across the conduit, why not just send a nuke through the moment this thing opens?”

  Heyer looked at the man as though he were somewhere between offended and bored. “While I appreciate that desire for a simple solution, if this were so easily solved it would hardly be a problem at all.”

  “So, no sending nukes through the conduit?” Paige asked.

  “Highly inadvisable,” Mr. Clean said. “As you said, obvious. Malkier will expect it and Cede will either disable or contain the device the moment it crosses over. Even if we somehow stopped them from doing so, disabling seven active conduit fields in such a sudden destructive manner would have unknown consequences.”

  “Like what?” Paige asked.

  “The effect would fall on a spectrum. One highly unlikely extreme possibility is that you’d get your desired outcome. The opposite extreme . . . well . . . the ultimate worst possible outcome would be a universe shattering event on par with what humans refer to as the big bang. The actual outcome would most likely be somewhere in between.”

  “Okay . . . so nuking the conduit is off the table then,” Collin said. “It was still worth asking.”

  When the meeting was adjourned, everyone else teleported back to their quarters. Jonathan had expected Mr. Clean would send him as well, but a few moments passed and the only people remaining in the room were Heyer and himself.

  He sighed and sat back into his chair. “What is it, Old Man?”

  “You knew. You knew exactly what Malkier was doing,” Heyer said. “You knew about the conduit. Do not deny it.”

  Jonathan took a deep breath and stared at the table. His silence speaking volumes, he knew better than to bother attempting to lie to the alien.

  “I need to know how that is possible, Jonathan,” Heyer demanded.

  Jonathan frowned. “I’ve already explained—”

  “Do not insult my intelligence,” Heyer interrupted. “I will admit, your friends have shown some usefulness. But, you and their shadows could not have foreseen something this specific in a thousand iterations of The Never let alone twenty-eight. Too much makes sense now, Jonathan. Too much that seemed random in your plan—fits. I would say you knew with certainty what Malkier was planning, but it seems you were willing to risk Grant’s life to be sure.”

  Jonathan took a long breath.

  “I told you,” Jonathan said. “You have to trust—”

  “I cannot!” Heyer yelled. “This is well past trust. You have intelligence on an operation taking place in another dimension. I cannot begin to fathom how you acquired it.”

  Jonathan absorbed this for some time. Finally, he stood, as though he might simply walk out. Of course, this room had no doors. He wasn’t going anywhere unless Heyer allowed it. Heyer stood as well, found himself talking to Jonathan’s back.

  “Something is very wrong here, Jonathan. I cannot leave all these lives in your hands if I cannot trust you,” Heyer said.

  Jonathan’s jaw clenched in frustration. When he spoke, his voice was an icy whisper. “Heyer, I am only going to say this once. Then we will never speak of it again.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “You’re right, I know things I should not. If I tell you how, I gamble with lives—perhaps all life. I wasn’t willing to do it for Rylee, so if you imagine I’ll do it for you then we don’t understand one another. So, this is what you are going to do. You’re going to ask yourself how everything I just told you could possibly be true.”

  Jonathan opened his eyes and looked at him. “You’ll know when you have the answer, because the moment you do, you’ll realize just as I did, that we can never speak of it. That you’ll never even risk hinting to me that you figured it out.”

  He’d known that Jonathan was playing some dangerous game, but a chill seeped into Heyer’s bones as he stared into that dead serious gaze. He could see it in Jonathan’s eyes, that the man feared saying what little he had. Whatever sort of explanation he’d thought Jonathan might give; he knew now that there were forces at play here that Heyer had yet to imagine.

  Jonathan put a hand on his shoulder. “I hope you never find the answer, Old Man. But, I can’t keep begging you to trust me.”

  Heyer’s gaze fell thoughtfully to the floor, and eventually he nodded.

  “Mr. Clean, please send Jonathan to his quarters,” Heyer said.

  Jonathan took his hand away, and disappeared, leaving the alien to his thoughts. Sometime passed before Heyer moved. “Mr. Clean, do you have any idea how anything Jonathan just said might be true?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Mr. Clean said. “However, nothing in his biometrics indicate he was attempting to mislead you.”

  Heyer swallowed. “So, he is either telling the truth, which would mean he is somehow smarter than both of us. Or, he is lying and does not know it.”

  “I really can’t say,” Mr. Clean said.

  “No, I know you cannot,” Heyer said. “But, in the end it is just another way of saying exactly what he has said since the beginning. I either trust him or I do not.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  JONATHAN STOOD IN what remained of downtown as the sun was setting behind Seattle’s broken skyline. Piles of rubble and abandoned vehicles cluttered the streets of the buildings that still stood, few remaining unscarred. The entire city was dark, the only light came from the fires burning in the wreckage.

  The grid was down—and it wasn’t a localized effect. Malkier’s first move would be analogous to a global EMP. It made too much tactical sense for a Borealis fighting a technologically inferior species. Human technology’s energy sources were so primitive that the Borealis didn’t even consider the knowledge a restricted weapon.

  If Mr. Clean could access Borealis’ records on how to take down human technology—so could Cede. When he’d asked Mr. Clean how difficult it would be for the other AI to provide Malkier the capability, the reply had been grim. Mr. Clean could think of over a dozen ways to disrupt human electrical devices before Malkier ever needed to set foot on the Earth.

  Of course, this wasn’t just about keeping humanity’s military forces from being of use. Now that Jonathan had exposed it, Malkier would be making sure his only known weakness wasn’t easily exploitable.

  An explosion hit the city like a thunderclap. Vibrations followed from the blast point, rolling through the streets with such force that Jonathan cou
ld see the wave drawing near from the sway of the buildings that still stood. A moment later, he could still hear the sound of a building collapsing.

  A thick cloud swept its way through the streets. Air that was already increasingly claustrophobic replenished with yet another dust cloud sweeping through the city’s remains. In another moment, he wouldn’t be able to see more than a few feet if he didn’t get moving.

  He ran lateral to the thick cloud as it approached, before jumping forty stories and crashing through a skyscraper’s window. Instead of landing in a shower of broken glass and obliterating the office décor of someone in middle management, he used the gleamers to cling to the outer edge. A moment later he turned around and launched himself back to the nearest rooftop.

  He hit the roof running and got on his comm. “Report.”

  “Bodhi here, we drew a group of combatants into a building along the waterfront, not too far outside the market. We synced our retreat and brought the building down on top of them.”

  Jonathan reached the end of the rooftop and shot across the dark skyline once again. He drew Doomsday and spun his body, using the spiked tip of the chain as a harpoon. It sunk into the outer wall of a nearby building and allowed him to change his path. Jonathan arced around the building’s corner and opened his palm. The gleamer disc implanted in his glove allowing him to anchor himself to the surface.

  “How’s cleanup going?” Jonathan asked, as he turned to look down on Bodhi’s position.

  “We broke into teams, been taking out the survivors as fast as they make their way out of the rubble. Keeping the bodies tagged for retrieval.”

  Jonathan flipped his visor down over his eyes. The current model of the HUD made him look like Geordi from Star Trek, though the design was smooth black instead of ridged gold. At the moment, the visors contained the last version of the HUD they had been adapting for battleground maneuvers. The newest version, the full helmet from Hayden’s design, hadn’t been implemented yet.

  The amount of destruction left their environment in a near constant cloud of dust and debris. Their implants allowed them to breathe without issue, but his men needed alien tech to keep their vision in these conditions. If they tried to use any human equivalent, they’d be rendered as useless as everything else the moment Malkier took out the grid.

  Much like the gleamers, Mr. Clean had been making the visors remarkably intuitive with use of the men’s constant feedback. The interface fed him information quickly. Not only could he see each member of Bodhi’s team below through the dust cloud, but they were identified by name, rank, and team assignment.

  Jonathan didn’t focus for long on the quelling of the Ferox as they emerged from the rubble, he was using his vantage to sweep the surrounding area. His men were wise to what happened when you dropped a building in the middle of a Feroxian battleground.

  He began to see movement as the Ferox poured forward and gathered in the streets surrounding Bodhi’s team. To say the Ferox behaved as though organized, would be giving them too much credit. This was a Ferox mob, they were all simply moving toward the sound of carnage in the hopes it signaled a fight. Any semblance of order was just a matter of follow-the-leader. The Ferox who had been further away when the building came down chasing after those who had been close enough to see it fall.

  Unfortunately, the Ferox had a critical advantage. Having evolved to live on a planet with frequent volcanic eruptions, the species was adapted to long periods of falling ash. They didn’t require technological assistance to keep a large portion of their sight in these circumstances.

  “Well, your ruckus got their attention. You got company closing in from all sides, largest group is coming from the west,” Jonathan said.

  “Not to fret, the building was step one,” Bodhi said.

  Jonathan smirked and gave Doomsday a yank, the steel tip tearing free from the wall on the other side of the building and flying back at him with enough force to take a normal man’s arm off. For Jonathan, a few well-practiced flourishes wrapped the chain tightly up the length of his arm.

  He got comfortable, releasing the gleamer and perching himself on a ledge a few stories down to observe. He was going to stay close, but he wouldn’t get involved unless the men got into trouble. For now, he wanted to see what Bodhi had planned for the mob.

  He opened the comm to listen in on the team’s chatter.

  “We got incoming, let’s give operation Deep End a try,” Bodhi said.

  Confirmation came through as the team began abandoning the remains of the building and moving into position. The majority headed east, but two groups of two split off from the rest.

  The first pair moved quickly, and Jonathan lost sight of them for a moment, but they didn’t go far before reappearing. They were headed straight for an intersection that would make them visible to the main Ferox horde rapidly closing in around them. There weren’t a lot of Ferox coming up on their rear from the east. Jonathan knew why and was willing to bet it played into Bodhi’s plan.

  The pair came to a stop in the intersection and disengaged the shielding that armored their torso. This didn’t leave them completely vulnerable, the alien steel plates only opened enough to allow the light from their implants to be visible.

  “The bait has taken the stage,” Bodhi said.

  The pair was no random selection; Jonathan could see it was Bodhi himself and Sam. They were, arguably, the fastest and most agile on their team—the whole army for that matter. This wasn’t to say that if he put the two in a room with Mito they would get the better of him, but their talent with the gleamers was something else. In other words, they were great at running away.

  Trying to corner Sam and Bodhi in a fight was like trying to catch water with a net.

  Jonathan hadn’t taken to the gleamers much himself, only using them for the more basic needs, such as anchoring himself to the occasional wall or keeping quiet if he wanted to move along a surface without his footsteps giving him away. He seldom used them in the middle of a fight unless he was retreating. The first time he’d given it a shot he’d felt like he was trying to re-learn everything he knew about hand-to-hand combat with roller skates on.

  Luckily, he’d done this in private, only Mr. Clean had been witness to provide mockery for his efforts.

  In the moments that remained, Jonathan turned his attention to the second pair that had split off from the team. His visor zoomed in on the two, and though their names were listed, he would have known them immediately by their shape and movements. Both had the gait of men who moved with the size of their own chests getting in the way.

  Lance and Matthews—interesting. While Bodhi and Sam represented the speed and finesse—these two represented the raw power under Bodhi’s command. The only time these two looked small was when Beo was in the room. Clearly, whatever part they had to play involved some heavy lifting.

  Lance and Matthews weren’t drawing attention to themselves. They left the area stealthily. It wasn’t hard with Bodhi and Sam standing in the middle of the street like bull fighters waving big irresistible red flags.

  Soon, the muscle was out of visual range. He could track their movements on the HUD map, but for the time being, Jonathan kept his attention on Sam and Bodhi. If anyone was about to be in any trouble, it was these two.

  Most of the approaching mob were Greens, but he could spot a few Reds trampling down the street amongst their ranks. Some made their way over the lower rooftops, the smaller could claw their way along the walls of buildings efficiently enough to keep out of the growing mass. The majority of the monsters were plunging forward through the streets. They clamored over the rubble and flattened any vehicles as they stampeded forward.

  The Ferox weren’t stupid, but as a mob they lost as many IQ points as humans. They also had a well-documented flaw of glory chasing. It was no shock that the moment those leading the pack came in range of Sam and Bodhi, they launched themselves at the men like living missiles—claws and teeth first.

  Neit
her Sam nor Bodhi moved from the center of the intersection as the swarm drew into range behind those that were already airborne.

  By the time Jonathan started to worry Bodhi and Sam might have miscalculated, it was already too late for him to get to them in time, but he dropped from his perch and started moving before he thought that far ahead.

  What happened next was—comical.

  Sam and Bodhi braced for impact. Then the front line of Ferox passed straight through them. Their claws and teeth trying to clamp down on empty air as they met with no resistance and crashed face first into the pavement behind Bodhi and Sam.

  The second wave of Ferox didn’t have time to adjust, were already coming in as hot and overcommitted as the first. They belly flopped into the ground as well, but with the added misfortune of slamming into their predecessors. By the time the third wave drew close, the mob was wising up to something being amiss. As roughly thirty of the beasts now in the lead halted, it caused a cascade of collisions through the rushing horde.

  Warily, the Ferox who had seen what happened sized up Sam and Bodhi, as they stood smirking at them in the middle of the intersection. They slowly approached, sniffing the air in confusion and looking for something the others had missed.

  At this point, the two men promptly disappeared in a flash of light, leaving the horde staring at an empty street. This brought a wave of confused hissing and guttural murmuring from the horde.

  Hologram? Jonathan thought. Mr. Clean must have come up with new toys for them to test. It was a good idea; to a race with nearly no understanding of technology, Sam and Bodhi’s disappearance might as well have been magic.

  Still, there was something painfully familiar about this entire exchange. Jonathan got the feeling that Hayden and Collin might have been the authors of this trick. He pulled up the mini map and located the two red dots that represented Sam and Bodhi’s true location and found said dots were rocketing toward the intersection from two opposite directions.