THERE’S A FLASH. I lift my forearm to shield my face, crouched like a neglected action figure left in a defensive pose. Instead, a fine rain of soot and ash drifts across me and I blink into the peripatetic sunlight. Jagged walls rise to a roofless cathedral at either side. The setting is at one and the same time familiar yet bizarre.
The sky has a red hue and it’s not just a farmer’s sunset. I’m standing in the wreck of Julian Lennon’s observatory. The property has been buried by time and dust, the walls crenulated by ruin, dented and broken and collapsed and scarred. If there were any furnishings, they are gone now, and that includes the half-familiar computer equipment, the long desks and my half-brother’s tragically splattered cadaver. And of course the time machine.
I step from a pile of bricks that shifts under me as I get to level ground, boots crunching over the debris of decades. A sparkle catches my eye and I retrieve a broken fob-watch from the chaos, not sure if I am remembering or just assuming it once hung from Julian’s waistcoat. I crush it to powder in my fist and it trickles from my hand as I skirt the remains of the chamber, duck through a low gap battered into one wall and out into the mausoleum countryside.
The French paysage has returned to nature. It’s impossible to tell what year it is as there is nothing in sight. No cows, vehicles, decorative hedges – you name it. As I circle the manor ruins, I see part of the old house remains roofed and intact and there is gentle smoke wafting from a chimney, a glint of something beckoning through a window in the twilight, and I move back up the mossy hill and notice a big trench, half grassed-over, with the remains of a half-dozen abandoned motor vehicles inside. The light isn’t good enough to tell if their damage is courtesy of entropy or actual destruction, but their blackened chassis are riddled with weeds and loose stones, the ground along one side scorched as if from ancient bonfires.
I move my attention back to the house, a curious trill in my heart thinking about my translocation, and at the same time, Nightwind’s betrayal.
“The little fucker could’ve stayed to help,” I mutter.
Easy on your brother, Joey. He’s not the man you are.
“I don’t think you know enough to be dishing out fatherly advice, pops.”
Hey, I’m not trying to. There’s a little coward in all of us. I was sympathizing.
I groan. “You don’t need to pronounce the gee, Lennon.”
Liverpool born and proud. You think we could watch the Premier League some time?
“I might make you a star-chart and let’s see if you can be well-behaved,” I reply.
Hmmm, never did much good with Tessa, did it?
I turn on the cold tap as I approach the house, thinking lewd thoughts to either stultify the old man or at least distract him. But my hand is barely on the rustic handle before there’s a loud thump behind me and my fine-tuned extra sensors tell me there’s a disproportionate amount of displaced air.
I spin about and there’s a big, weary-looking black man in a dark scarlet bodysuit and a tattered, wine-colored cloak that tends to purple at its ragged edges. There’s something lived-in about the suit’s inhabitant, going very slightly at the paunch, enormously broad shoulders slumped with emotion and black shotgun stubble turning to Rasta along with his hair. All that said, there’s something familiar about the guy and if it wasn’t for the suggestion of casual violence in his leer, I might ponder the identity puzzle for longer. Instead, I back up and prepare my fists for yet another bout of ass-whooping.
And then out of nowhere it hits me.
“Holy shit, you’re Bryant Gumbel!”
*
THE OTHER COSTUME merely sniffs at my comment. As I watch, he grows in size and bulk until he’s topping ten feet with shoulders about as broad as I am tall. It’s enough to make even me gulp as he bares bone-white teeth and sneers.
“I don’t know where you little shits are getting your intelligence, but I thought I made it clear last time, you need to stay out of Western Europe.”
He cracks his knuckles and adds, “This is my domain now. Go try the Eastern Bloc and given Ottoman a hard time.”
“Sorry pal, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Zephyr.”
“Whoever, you fuckin’ amateur. Drop to your knees and put your hands on your head.”
As he says this, he fishes some kind of high-tech collar from under his cloak and looks a little near-sighted as he tries to switch it on. The thing starts to hum, emitting a soft blue light, and I realize Gumbel’s got to be pushing sixty.
Of course, last time I saw him he was doing a live cross when the Atlantic City Zoo got a new fleet of penguins. There’s nothing on Wikipedia about him having super powers – or claiming Europe as his personal stomping ground.
“This is . . . France, right?”
Gumbel ignores me. He fidgets with the collar a moment and then looks into the sky and I see a small black chunk of Lego slowly approaching from the distance.
“Are you listening to me?” he asks, irritated. “Kneel. Or you know what’s coming next.”
“I don’t think you’re listening to me, asshole,” I reply.
Sparks leap across my knuckles as I flex them.
“I don’t know who you are, but I’m not exactly here of my own volition anyway. I’m here for the Preacher Man.”
Gumbel stares at me for longer than I would like before finally speaking in a faintly incredulous voice.
“You don’t know who I am?”
He looks about as far removed as you could imagine from the guy you and I know as a popular albeit long-suffering network weatherman.
“You can call me Fortress. Or sir, if you like.”
“I don’t much like either.” I gesture to the still far-off black hovercraft. “And if these guys are the type of goons I’m guessing they are, it looks like it’s time to kick your hairy black ass.”
“Is that meant to be . . . racist?”
“No, pal. I kick ass in all the colors of the rainbow. Now, batter-up.”
Wanting to end this fight before it starts – and mindful of the space cavalry headed on my six – I lift two hands and open up with a wide-angle electrical blast that keeps on flowing like something from Ghostbusters as I advance on the self-styled Fortress. The big guy staggers, lifting forearms like hams to take the worst of the damage, soaking it up big-time until I come to the end of my “breath” and have to take a second to recharge.
However badly he’s hurt – and I already know it isn’t badly enough for my liking – one consequence of the charge-up is he’s dropped about two feet in height and the resulting mass. I’m happy about this for about three picoseconds. And then the big bruiser lowers his forearms and I can see the whites of his eyes, literally, with nothing but incandescent power leaking from them and then filling the screen as he unleashes that energy in a flashing blast that knocks me back a good hundred feet, rolling and spilling backwards like down a hillside except the ground’s perfectly level.
When I pick myself up, steam curls from my arms and my singed hair seems intent on enhancing my newfound punk credentials. I also feel like baby worms have shat all through my veins. Fortress lifts into the air, a nimbus of power burning like a religious icon in my vision as the rotor-less helicarrier lands beside the shattered observatorium.
If this isn’t the all-is-lost moment, I don’t know what is, but as any good writer will tell you, it’s got to get bad before it gets any better.
Zephyr 10.2 “Life Imitates Art”
FORTRESS HAS GOT his cavalry and it seems I have mine. They come raining down as I manage to scrape myself off the grass, thinking about a strategy other than recharging my enemy’s fuel cells for free.
They are a motley bunch: a flying woman with bright-burning hair carrying a Middle Earth-looking guy; a powerfully built black guy in dark colors; a female brick with a Valkyrie hair-do, and a few more people I actually recognize – Nocturne and Stiletto, and my old buddy Red Monolith. My dead buddy, Red Monolith. He comes down, flyi
ng like the rest of them, familiar crash helmet with its red strip in place. And just like the man I knew, he doesn’t hesitate on arrival, barrel-rolling and then smashing straight into the motherfucker who just put me down.
I guess the question stopped being what year, but rather which.
The big blonde woman slaps her palms together and there’s a sound like the Devil’s asshole. I wince, but she grins to have my attention and calls across to me in thickly-accented English.
“You want to lend a hand, pretty boy, or did we come all this way for nothing?”
I stand properly and dust off my knees.
“No, I’m good. Who are you? I’m Zephyr.”
“Uh-huh. I’m Olga. We’re what passes for the Resistance around here. You got that?”
“Sure.”
I watch as Nocturne hovers over the scene, familiar even with most her face covered by the dark hooded cloak she favors. There’s a subtle sense of psychic radiation bathing everything, dampening our presence, but this isn’t going to help much with the shock troops just setting down and disembarking from the hovering helicarrier bigger than even the FBI use back in . . . uh, I guess I should say “my” world.
The ranger-looking dude and the other black guy rush in and join Red Monolith in tackling Fortress, who throws them around like bean bags.
“Huntsman and Ja will keep Fortress occupied long enough for us to deal with these Enforcers. Are you coming, handsome?”
I nod, the whole thing more than a little surreal. I look up at Nocturne, but if she knows me, she doesn’t show it. The same could be said for Stiletto. I move up alongside her and nod, drinking in her familiar dark-haired, black-clad figure like it’s me who’s the amnesiac. The lady leaking permanent daylight from every pore of her skin and hair at least manages to give me a smile as we line up watching these twenty-odd black-armored troopers disembark from the helicarrier.
“Hey. I’m Solaris,” she says in what I think is a Canadian accent.
“You sound like you’re a long way from home. Me too. I’m Zephyr.”
“Yeah,” the woman replies. “What were you thinking? You know they’ve got the whole continent on lockdown with active scanning.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
She wrinkles her nose in a way I think I’d find cute if I didn’t have to shield my eyes.
“Who? Dummy, The Twelve. Who do you think?”
“Enough chit-chat, my cuties,” says Olga. “Time to rumble. Ja?”
*
THE BIG DANISH woman steps into line with the three of us as Fortress’s ongoing shenanigans saturate the background. I feel a little guilty, like I should be helping, but Nocturne’s familiar yet forgotten voice echoes a comment in reply.
Help pacify the Enforcers, she says with a touch of steely command that is unusual. I have the area blanked out for all communication including telepathy. Deal with them and then Fortress will be on his own.
“Sounds like a plan.”
I wink to Stiletto.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “Have we met before?”
“I doubt it,” I say and smile.
“Then keep your fucking leer to yourself.”
She bristles, black-clad, and before I can think of a witty retort containing the right mix of derision and grit, her angles break into a series of overlapping black planes, sharp ones, as she does her two-dimensional trick ready for the looming confrontation. I have to admit everyone’s battle-hardened cocksureness is starting to bite. I’m not too good at feeling like the novice in the room. Muttering something incomprehensible as well as probably unprintable under my breath, I make a fist and propel forward into the middle of these still-assembling, so-called Enforcers.
“What’re you waiting for?” I holler behind me. “This isn’t Braveheart! Come on!”
I fly straight into the invisible force-field with a noise like dropped Tupperware. On my ass, I can sense if not actually hear my new teammates chuckling, and these Enforcer guys, a motley mix of French and Germans to judge by their catcalls, quickly fall back into semi-military order as one with a red armband quickly issues instructions in French so fast and brutal I can’t even make sense of the nouns, if there are any.
The goons wear riot armor and carry short-barreled black submachineguns belt-fed by slim, black metallic backpacks, their chunky belts suggesting more hardware just waiting to get a mention. From my seated position, I spread my palms and fire off a test wattage of sparks, unsurprised when the invisible shield rapidly cycles through a chromatic spectrum to negate my attack.
Olga, Stiletto and Solaris jog up beside me and the big Danish woman takes my hand to jerk me to my feet.
“I figure it’s the transport powering the force-field, ja?”
“That would be right, sweetheart,” she says and nods.
“How to get through, then?”
“I’ve got it sorted,” Stiletto says, and before I can even blink, she throws herself down where the energy shield meets the ground and scrabbles flat through a molecule-wide gap none of us could possibly discern.
The shock troops scatter in surprise to see the fox suddenly among the hens. Stiletto moves with an admirable grace and brutality I’ve never really seen from her before, working hard and fast on the streets of Atlantic City. Clearly the rules have been revised here and Stiletto moves with an abandon outweighed only by its savagery.
She swings and cuts and dances between the fleeing Enforcers and everywhere her palm or toe strikes, a man goes down howling in pain as her nano-thin living bladed body slices through whatever pathetic armor they are wearing. But she has her eyes on the main prize and is through the mob in an instant, hurtling up the big carrier’s ramp before anyone thinks or is really able to stop her.
*
THE ENFORCERS’ WEAPONS-fire doesn’t cut the mustard with a woman who is effectively intangible. Within seconds some sharp detonating noises come from within the big cruiser and it lists on one of its landing struts and the blunt, brick-like nose slumps into the grass sending a thump like a miniature earthquake running beneath our feet. A second later and one of its tinted windshields bursts apart and Stiletto tumbles free, pursued by zippy tracer fire from more Enforcers inside.
This is our cue. The remaining fifteen-odd Enforcers on the ground give a new definition to shock troops as I light them up in pairs, walking forward with my hands dancing like I’m conducting an orchestra. Solaris has a few pretty neat kung fu moves. I guess she’s too worried about burning these pricks to a crisp to use her energy powers. Olga is less troubled, either slapping her palms together to project these nasty focused attacks, or simply grabbing the Enforcers in pairs and slamming them together until they lay passed out on the ground like so many useless frat boys.
A few of them get shots off up close. I lift my arm across my face as a burst streams my way, deflecting weird, low velocity gyro rounds that don’t achieve whatever it is they’re meant to do. I get up to the guy and wrest the weapon from him and the line to the ammo pack on his back breaks open spilling undetonated shells that look like sperm from an ICBM. A split-second later and the German trooper is on his back in agony courtesy of a broken jaw.
I turn and Olga has lifted a guy above her head by his belt and the back of his neck. She’s an impressive-looking lady, maybe seven feet in height and wearing a metal bustier and a grey, arms-free costume that looks like it’s been bolted onto her like battleship armor. The defenseless trooper flies yodeling through the air and I fire a bolt into him as much to quieten his misery as to show off my sharpshooting skills.
“I think you can save your juice for the main act, don’t you think?” Olga says and she indicates with her thumb where Red Monolith, Huntsman and this other guy Ja surround Fortress like pit bulls on a pensioner.
“Yeah,” I nod. “Got any tips for me?”
“Fortress is an energy absorber,” Stiletto says, stepping up beside me.
I used to tease her about being Jodie Foster’s
lost kid sister until an awful life-imitates-art incident at a small town bar left the actress in a permanent coma. Not so funny now.
“He can take almost any hit and channel it into his own energy attack or into body mass,” Stiletto says in that strange militaristic way of speaking that’s clearly more common on this world.
“Psionics?”
I tilt my thumb at Nocturne, wary of any accidental up-skirt if I actually look that way.
“All of The Twelve have evolved beyond the point where our mental attacks can have any effect on them,” Solaris says. “You probably never met Psychor, but he went one-on-one with Preacher. Left him a vegetable . . . and he was our toughest psion.”
“So there’s still . . . twelve, you know, of The Twelve?”
We watch as our three allies throw themselves at Fortress. It reminds me of watching little kids ganging up on a playful dad, only this one doesn’t know his own strength. Huntsman, who looks like a cross between Aragorn and a bondage gimp, goes flying into swampy reeds on the far side of the property.
“Oh, our movement managed to take out a few of them. Arsenal. Avenger. Torpedo,” Olga says. “Each time, they elevate one of their coven. The cities, the ones that are left, anyway, are crowded with turncoats jockeying for favor.”
“At least we took out Paris,” Solaris says with undisguised glee.
Olga smiles, almost winces, but Stiletto’s expression remains unchanged.
“Took out?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Solaris led a team from our base in northern Germany,” Olga says.
“We teleported in a fully-armed Russian nuclear submarine Nautilus found scuttled off the Bering Strait,” Solaris says. “Set the whole fucking thing off. No more Paris. No more High Court for Fortress.”
I whistle softly, unable to imagine the carnage, the sheer desperation that would sanction such madness.
“No wonder he seems so pissed.”
“Shame about Mercator,” Stiletto says. “And Meridian.”
Zephyr III Page 11
