by Tanya Allan
The Torc
(Book 1 – The Emerging)
By
Tanya Allan
The Torc (Book 1 – The Emerging) - Copyright2015 Tanya Allan
The author asserts her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
All Rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Any adaptation of the whole or part of the material for broadcast by radio, TV, or for stage plays or film, is the right of the author unless negotiated through legal contract. Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited.
This work is fictitious, and any similarities to any persons, alive or dead, are purely coincidental. Mention is made of persons in public life only for the purposes of realism and for that reason alone. Certain licence is taken in respect of medical procedures, terms and conditions, and the author does not claim to be the fount of all knowledge.
The author accepts the right of the individual to hold his/her (or whatever) own political, religious and social views, and there is no intention to deliberately offend anyone.
The Author
With enormous experience of life, the author brings to life some of the nastier sides of the human condition, with many of the better attributes. Having started writing as a teenager, but never publishing anything until the half century loomed, Tanya successfully brought together elements of the real world, her dreams, fantasies and failed aspirations to breathe life into three-dimensional characters and situations that warrant further attention. Known for producing happy endings (for the most part), but also keen to see true justice is seen to be done, which unfortunately doesn’t happen as often as it should in real life.
Now concentrating on writing, the author enjoys foreign travel, family, faith and furry friends.
My thanks to my editor Tom Peashey
Author: I Am Woman: The Dani Affair,Escape From Iran and Madam President
Books by Tanya Allan
Her AMAZON.COM PAGE: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004VTB5OQ
A Chance would be a Fine Thing (Knox Journals Book 1)
A Fairy's Tale
A Girl can but Dream
Amber Alert
A Tale of Two T’s*
A Wedding and Two Wars (Knox Journal Book 2)
Beginning's End
Behind The Enemy
Dead End (Candy Cane 2)
Dragons & Stuff!
Emma*
Every Little Girl's Dream #
Extra Special Agent
Flight or Fight
Fortune's Soldier
Gruesome Tuesday*
In Plain Sight*
In The Shadows
It Couldn't Happen, Could it?
Killing Me Slowly*
Marine I: Agent of Time*
Modern Masquerade
Monique*#
Queen of Hearts*
Ring the Change
Shit Happens - so do Miracles*
Skin*
Tango Golf: Cop with A Difference
The Candy Cane Club
The Hard Way*
The Other Side of Dreams
There's No Such Thing as a Super Hero
The Summer Job & Other Stories
The Torc (Book 1 – The Emerging)
To Fight For a Dream*
Twisted Dreams*
TWOC - A Comedy of Errors
Weird Wednesday*
When Fortune Smiles
When I Count to Three #
Whispers in the Mind*
Whispers in the Soul*
*Paperbacks can be found here: http://www.feedaread.com/profiles/368/ # = Published on KOBO.COM
Prologue
England – Autumn 2009
Sidney Rawlings, known as 'Sid the Snake' to his few friends and most of the officers at the local police station, breathed out and wiped the sweat from his brow.
A small man, no taller than five-two and weighing less than a hundred and twelve pounds (eight stone); he made good use of his small stature in squeezing through very small spaces. He'd burgled his first house when just twelve years old and had never looked back. Except, of course, for the five occasions when he'd looked back from the dock at his weeping mother, as he'd been taken down for increasingly long stretches of imprisonment at Her Majesty's pleasure.
This time was different, or so he told himself. It would have to be, as he was almost forty years old and wasn't as supple as he once had been. Also, he really didn't want to be sent away for Her Majesty's pleasure ever again. The dear old Queen could get her pleasure from some other distraction; racehorses, perhaps?
This time he couldn't get caught, as there was no way anyone could possibly know it was him. He stayed on the roof and watched as the police and security officers completed a fruitless search of the building and surrounding area. As the last police car withdrew, he eased his aching joints and prepared to climb down and make good his escape.
If a burglary was successful as a direct correlation to the amount of research and preparation, then this job was as good as done, for Sidney had excelled himself this time!
The building was ultra modern, with all the latest high-tech security systems in place, as well as a small army of security personnel. There were four separate buildings operating from this collection of premises on a brand new industrial estate on the outskirts of Slough, in Berkshire. All were potential targets for a good burglar. However, only one was his specific target on this Saturday night, Garratt Electronics.
Old man Howard Garratt had retired some twelve years ago as computers were just beginning to explode across the technological market. Giles Garrett, his nephew (Howard had never married, so had no son or daughter to whom he could pass on the company) had stepped behind his uncle’s desk and, unusually, taken the company into the twenty-first century in spectacular fashion.
Giles had been a computer geek as a child, and hadn't changed now he was in his forties. He had been writing programs as a seven year old, so was now the UK equivalent to a certain Mr Gates over in the colonies.
His speciality had proved to be a memory system that revolutionised data storage. It was only just beginning to impact the domestic and small business market, but already most large businesses and organisations had bought into his product.
The GG/Plus System was exceptionally compact and was capable of storing almost unlimited data, backing up and retrieving data within nano-seconds and, most importantly, was about as secure as one could ever get. Cloud, Dropbox and other internet based systems were okay, but if you wanted 100% secure, you couldn’t get better than GG/Plus.
This building was the major UK site of the company, in which all the hardware was developed, manufactured and stored for eventual distribution.
Much of the hardware was small enough to hold in the palm of one hand, so Sid's backpack would hold several million pounds worth of very sellable technology.
All windows and doors were sealed and watched by electronic sensor systems and human eyes through a secure CCTV system. There was no way into or out of the building that wasn't covered by some form of security. All, that is, except one.
The A/C system was almost as high-tech as the products being manufactured, but it had one flaw, and Sid intended to take advantage of the flaw. That flaw was the air intake duct.
Because of the size of the building, the fact that an even temperature was essential for the products being d
eveloped and manufactured and that it had to be easily maintained and accessed by humans, there was one duct that was almost big enough for a child or trained monkey to slither through.... or Sid the Snake.
Sid had entered the secure compound by simply scaling the wire fence at the rear. Then, by climbing up the exterior of the building at the back, he gained access to the roof. By carefully removing one of the domed duct covers, he revealed the single shaft that disappeared into the gloom of the building.
Although not that large an opening, it was sufficient for him to squeeze his small frame down. He had to remove all clothing, except his briefs, a webbing belt with small tool kit, and his shoes. Having smeared grease all over his body, he slithered down the duct, pulling his pack behind him, attached by a cord to his wrist.
Half an hour later, he'd removed the retaining screws of the duct in the ground floor warehouse area and dropped soundlessly to the floor. Within another fifteen minutes, he had removed sufficient memory chips to fill his bag, replaced the duct cover and was making slow progress back up the duct towards the roof.
Somewhere in the bowels of the building he heard an alarm, so knew that his presence in the warehouse had been discovered either by motion sensors or temperature sensors. Confident that his access and egress would be undiscovered, his plan was to remain hidden firstly within the duct, and then on the roof, under a military-spec, heat-retaining blanket that he had brought along for just the purpose.
Sure enough, as he rose from the bowels of the plant, he could hear the familiar and hated chrupp-chrupp of the police helicopter as it made its way towards his location. He simply waited within the duct for the helicopter to hover and use their hi-tech, heat signature camera on the roof and then start to run increasing circles of search pattern away from the location. He emerged as it moved away, slipped under his blanket beneath the over-hanging parapet of the roof, hoping that the blanket's specifications were as he hoped and expected.
The heat signature camera and other technology on board the helicopter were the bane of his life, and he owed the last two stretches inside to the technology on helicopters.
Although they had already checked the roof, they returned for just one more look. It seemed to hover directly above him for what appeared to be an eternity, eventually making larger circles and eventually disappeared to the east. His one hope was that the helicopter's two negative searches of the roof would render any further searching by police or security redundant. His hope seemed to bear fruit. The police cars and people on the ground gradually dispersed, and he was alone again.
He had just dressed once more in his dark clothing, feeling slightly light headed with relief and satisfaction when he felt a slight breeze against his bare cheek. The night was incredibly still, so this breeze cooled him, so he sensed that he was no longer alone.
Spinning round, he saw, much to his surprise, a tall girl standing a short distance away with a smile on her face and her hands on her hips. She looked directly at him, displaying no surprise or fear.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, stepping towards her.
It was only then that he realised that although she was but a few feet away, there was no safe surface between them, for she was standing on fresh air. That is, she was perfectly stationary, but her feet were some eighty feet from the tarmac of the car park below. She was floating in mid-air!
He stopped himself before he fell over the parapet, doing a passable imitation of a man just about to fall from a great height, including the mad flapping of arms and the justifiably terrified expression.
For the first time this evening, he felt fear. Not the apprehension that he might get caught, as he was used to that. This was different. This was the fear of something inexplicable and something he could neither control nor comprehend. This was compounded by the fear of knowing with a degree of certainty that, unless a miracle happened, he was going to go back to prison.
He stared at the young woman, as if by seeing her properly, she might disappear or something equally useful.
She didn't.
Her long fair hair floated slightly as she worked to retain the same altitude. She looked remarkably normal to Sid; in that she was attractive, with a nice figure that went in and out in all the right places although as she was wearing a dark sweater, tight dark leggings and high heeled boots, he wasn't best able to judge in the dark. It was hard to gauge her age, but she was certainly no more than eighteen or nineteen.
The only thing that wasn't dark was a faintly glowing circlet of dull silver or grey metal around her neck. His avaricious eyes were drawn to it, as he subconsciously appraised its value and saleability, despite being in a very vulnerable situation.
“Good morning Mr Burglar. I'm so sorry to disappoint you, as you so nearly got away with this one, didn't you?” she said in an educated and delightfully pleasant voice.
On his belt, he knew there were various tools. One of which was a gravity knife. Half turning away from her, he hid that side from her view and slipped the knife from the belt, opening the blade with a flick of his wrist and throwing it at her as hard as he could.
As the blade headed rapidly for her ample chest, so Sid felt the risings of remorse and not a little guilt as he mentally started to add murder to his list of previous convictions.
He would never forget what happened next. In fact, for the next ten years, as he lay on his bunk in Brixton Prison, he'd have nightmares about it.
The blade was true and directly on course to impact the woman in the centre of her chest, between her delicately rising breasts.
When it was literally a hair's breadth away from her, it simply stopped. She lazily reached up with her left hand and plucked the knife from the air, closing the blade and wagging the index finger of her right hand at him.
“You nasty little man; how dare you?” she said, the tone of her voice sounding remarkably like Miss Pickles, his first primary school teacher.
Floating towards him, she then reached out, grabbed him by the neck and springing with her legs against the parapet, launched vertically off into the night sky with him screaming.
Ten minutes later, the bell sounded on the external door of Slough Police Station custody suite. Bearing in mind that this door was within a secure compound, this was unusual in itself, as no one had opened the exterior gate to enter the compound.
There was a CCTV camera on the outside of the door. Those inside looked at the monitor, and simply saw what they assumed was the top of someone’s head against the camera.
Christopher Smith was the Custody Sergeant, so he opened the door to find the diminutive Sid staring wide-eyed and gibbering soundlessly. In his hand was a large bag with 'SWAG' written thereon. Across his chest was taped a single piece of A4 paper. The sergeant reached out and took the paper, amused that Sid slid soundlessly to the ground. The sergeant smelled fresh urine and was surprised to see that the diminutive burglar had wet himself.
Sergeant Smith read what was on the paper aloud to the few officers that had come to see the commotion.
“I, Sidney Rawlings, have burgled Garratt Electronics. I entered the A/C duct on the roof and gained access to the warehouse to remove the contents of this bag. I used a special blanket to evade detection by the helicopter's thermal imaging camera. This blanket is still on the roof along with a few assorted tools that I used to help me gain access. No one helped me, and I wish to make a full confession.”
It was signed by Sid in what appeared, to Sergeant Smith, to be blood. Actually, it turned out to be red felt pen, but was suitably dramatic.
The policeman looked at the gibbering wreck of a man on the ground, who had just started to steam gently.
“Is this right?” he asked. “You've just screwed the Garratt building?”
Sid said nothing, but nodded. Then he started to weep, so the sergeant helped him to his feet and took him into the warmth and relative safety of the police station.
Had Sergeant Smith looked up, he would have seen the gir
l smile in satisfaction, as she turned in the air and, using the roof of a nearby building as a springboard, appeared to fly rapidly away across the dark sky.
One
How it all began, a long, long, long time ago....
As the first fingers of dawn stretched up over the mountains, the animals and birds in the forest changed their tune. As the nocturnal beasts all found their hidey-holes for the day, the day creatures started to awaken and called out to each other. It was breakfast time, so from the very smallest to the very largest, life entered once again into a battle for survival.
By the time the sun rose above the horizon and its warmth spread across the lush, verdant land, the level of noise had increased markedly, as had the evidence of their presence. Multi-coloured birds flitted across the tree tops, and a myriad of small mammals shook the trees as they scurried amongst the branches. On the forest floor, rodents and lizards vied for the multitude of insects in the piles of rotting vegetation and new shoots.
Far to the north, enormous tendrils of glacial ice continued their inexorable march southwards, covering whole vistas with their white mantle. Great beasts of these lands slowly migrated south, ahead of the great white cliffs, to find warmth and food, as the icy glacial deserts offered little comfort for all but the hardiest creatures. The vast grasslands and forests became more crowded, offering the predators a whole new menu from which to choose.
Into this scenario came a ship. Not with sails that floated on water, but a cylinder that sped between the stars. It was an exploratory scout ship with a crew of six. This new world offered their entire race a hope that was all but forlorn and almost lost. For their home world was no more, destroyed when their sun had burned itself into a giant nova and disintegrated. Enormous colony ships, each with many thousand individuals, were launched and sent out in the vain hope that one of the many small scout ships would find a habitable world upon which they might continue their existence.
After four years of confinement, the crew looked out upon this blue and green gem with optimism that none had felt for many years. Selecting a region that would offer the most compatible climate and potential for habitation, the ship landed by the border between a large forest and an expanse of grassland. The crew were eager to conduct the tests that would confirm or deny them their chance to colonise this beautiful place.
