New Atlantis Bundle, Books1-3

by Glover, Nhys

  ‘Will he live?’ she demanded, not sure why it meant so much to her that he did.

  He was her saviour and an ally, but her feelings for him went so much deeper than that. When she had looked into his face for the first time, even as it twisted with pain, she saw something. It was something that was at once familiar, and yet discomfortingly different. She knew this man, although she was aware she had never seen him before. And he was as vital to her as breathing.

  The medic with the tablet looked up, and smiled his reassurance at her. She knew him by sight: an Old Timer like herself, named Perry. At the moment, he looked about forty. ‘There is a bullet wedged close to the heart, but little peripheral damage. We should be able to remove it safely. His blood loss is severe, but we can replace that. I am optimistic he will live.’

  She smiled back at him, feeling the serenity of her home closing around her like a comforting blanket. No need to worry. Everything would be fine. In this world, there was never anything to be concerned about. It was as different from the world she had just left as two places could be.

  ‘Faith, what happened? Where is Zygmunt?’

  Faith turned away from the hovercot, as it began to move back toward the transfer station next to the cavern wall. In a few seconds, the medivac team and their patient would be teleported to the medical centre above ground.

  Trying to let go of her worries for the paratrooper, she watched as the giant, Nordic figure of Jac Ulster, the leader of the Children’s In-Situ Retrieval Program, approached her. His handsome face was stern with worry.

  ‘He is dead. We were attacked by three Gestapo agents as we were making our way to the Extraction Point. I would probably be dead too, but for that American paratrooper who saved me.’

  ‘He is an unsanctioned Retrieval, Faith.’ There was censure in his tone, and she looked away from his ice blue gaze. Her guilt threatened to crush her. Just one more mistake she had made. But this one didn’t feel like a mistake, no matter what Jac thought.

  ‘I know. But he saved me, and he would have died, if I had left him.’

  ‘The Gestapo?’

  ‘All dead. He killed all three. He was phenomenal. I think he might be a commando. His skills were superior to soldiers of his time.’

  ‘We do not Retrieve warriors, Faith. Remember the impact a few such men had in the early years?’

  Faith remembered only too well. Like the rest of the world, the armies were decimated by the Last Great Plague in 2120. What was left of them were gathered together by the remaining political leaders of the planet, and sent out to collect all the survivors. This they had done with efficiency and speed, across huge distances.

  But once the survivors were settled and new clone bodies integrated, the need for an armed force was no longer there.

  Unfortunately, many of the soldiers didn’t see it that way. For them, losing their career was an even greater loss than the lives of their loved ones. They had lost their meaning and purpose for living when the forces were disbanded. Some committed suicide. Others tried to lead rebellions against the government.

  But the planet’s few survivors were tired of warfare, and blamed the deaths of billions on it. Although no one knew for sure, it was commonly believed that the Last Great Plague was a biological weapon gone rogue.

  So the uprisings were easily put down, and the military had all chosen death rather than imprisonment. There had never been another armed force on the planet in the two hundred years since.

  ‘He may not be a career soldier. Men and women of all walks of life joined the armed forces during World War Two,’ she countered, amazed by her temerity. Since beginning this fight to establish a mission to rescue the children destined for the Death Camp, she had become a lot more assertive. After more than two hundred years of gentle conformity, this change had been troubling at first. But, with role models like Cara Westchester, Millie Solarno and Jane NewSW, what had probably always been a sublimated personality trait, started to come to the fore. And she wasn’t sorry.

  ‘Yes, of course. It is hard not to tar all fighting men as killers. It is a prejudice I still carry after all this time. And he risked his life for you. We owe him his life, at the very least. Do you feel up to debriefing now?’ He had placed his hand on her arm as a gesture of comfort.

  This man’s size made her feel protected, not threatened. She knew him to be one of the kindest men in New Atlantis, and one of the most determined.

  ‘I would like to be with the paratrooper until I know he is out of danger. May I do my debrief latter in the day?’ She tried to smile bravely up at Jac, but knew her expression was more of a grimace. ‘The way I am feeling at this moment, I just want to abort the whole project. But that is not my prerogative. I may feel differently, once I have calmed down.’

  ‘Take all the time you need, Faith. We have not finalised a date for the mission. It could be postponed for years, if necessary.’

  Faith still found it odd to experience the realities of time travel. While the pressure was on, with just a little less than twenty four hours until the mission commenced in that time-line, here, it could be centuries before it was undertaken. With the almost eternal life granted to them by the clone bodies they regularly used and replaced, and the flexibility of time travel, the citizens of New Atlantis had all the time in the world in which to act.

  That was how she had lived her life in the last two centuries. The need for haste during Jumping was something she was not yet comfortable with. It left her, between Jumps, with a nagging sense of anxiety, as if she’d forgotten something crucial, or left something essential undone.

  ‘I will send Jane over to you. I know she will want to help, if she can.’

  Faith smiled her gratitude, and began to make her way to the elevator at the far end of the cavern. A quick glance around the vast space occupied by the Time Travel Start Point gave her a reassuring sense of wellbeing. After the few minutes of crisis, while the Medivac team came to deal with this latest emergency, the huge, brightly lit cavern had settled back into calm efficiency. The rows of computer terminals, fanning out from the massive, stone gateway set on the ancient dais, were all flickering with information called up by the minds of their calmly focused operators. They were oddly out of place amongst the relics of the underground temple of Ancient Atlantis. But, in a world where the past, present and future fused, such anachronisms were common.

  This was the world she knew. This was her world. That other place, that nightmare place of death, fear and impatience, was long gone. Nearly four hundred years in the past. Gone for now, but maybe not for ever.

  Shuddering at that last thought, she hurried to the elevator, and made her way to the surface and the medical centre not far away.

  It was an hour later that Jane joined her in the waiting room. Soft, soothing baroque music played in the background, and Faith had curled up on the comfortable two person sofa with a plate of hot food and a cup of coffee. She smiled at her tall friend as she hurried toward her.

  ‘Oh, Faith, I just got the message. How are you feeling? It’s hard to believe – Zygmunt dead, and you almost killed by Nazis. Even after a year in this world, such possibilities do my head in.’

  ‘I am well, Jane, thank you. Just in shock, I think. I have seen more than my share of death in my life, but I have never seen anyone shot before. Especially someone I knew. It is all surreal. Like a nightmare I think I have woken up from, but then find I am still dreaming.’

  Faith’s beautiful friend sat down beside her, and placed one long, elegant arm around her shoulder, drawing her in close. Even though Jane looked no more than twenty, and was the only person in New Atlantis who actually was that age, she always felt like Faith’s older sister. That Jane towered over her by a good six inches probably accounted for some of that feeling. But there was also the sense that Jane was an Old Soul, far wiser than her years. Few people treated her like a girl barely out of her teens.

  Especially not her Bonded mate, Julio, who thought
the sun and moon shone out of her. His passionate Latin heritage had finally come into its own when he Retrieved Jane from 1968. And his demonstrative affection made Jane the subject of much envy amongst the female members of their community.

  Clones were not normally sexual beings, as they were sterile by the nature of their artificially accelerated development. And without hormonal surges, few citizens felt passionate emotions, or much in the way of sexual urges. For this reason, demonstrative lovers were a rarity.

  But there had been an upsurge in what could only be called romantic love, all over the Confederacy, recently. Whether it was due to the changes taking place within their hitherto unchanging world, particularly with the introduction of children, no one knew. But it was still rare, still an anomaly, and it was an interesting trend the government was watching closely.

  For Faith, watching two loving Bonds like Jane and Julio, and Jac and Cara, made her yearn for such a match for herself. Those couples seemed so much more ‘whole’ with a romantic partner. And she had never realised that there was something missing from her own life until she started to come in contact with the two couples.

  Faith wanted what they had. She wanted it fiercely. And it surprised her how strong that urge to be whole had become.

  With a sudden surge of awareness, the piece of the puzzle fell into place. That was what she recognised in the paratrooper’s face: the part of her that was missing. He was what made her whole.

  How could this be? She didn’t even know him. He was a stranger from a different world – a man who killed without compunction, without mercy. Even though she had led Jac to believe he was not a warrior, she knew differently. This was not an accountant forced to take up arms to defend his country. He was a trained and capable, career killer. If she had been his enemy, he would as easily have put a bullet in her as he had the Gestapo agents.

  This was not a man who would fit into the peaceful Utopia in which she lived. How could she even consider that he was her missing half? He was probably a brute, with no finer feelings at all. Saving her had been part of his job. He felt nothing for her. Was possibly incapable of feeling anything for her.

  ‘Are you up to telling me what happened?’ Jane finally broke the comfortable silence between them.

  ‘I am trying not to think about it. I will have everything pulled out of me during Debrief. I would rather not go there until then, if that is all right.’

  ‘Sure, whatever you need. But why are you waiting here to find out about this soldier? He saved your life, I get that. But a polite thank you when he wakes up should be all that’s required of you.’

  Faith looked up into her friend’s gold sprinkled, green eyes. They were beautiful, and saw much more than they should. It would have been discomforting, that incisive vision, if it had been welded by someone less kind. But with Jane, it just made a person feel understood.

  ‘When did you know that Julio was the one?’

  Jane’s expression changed from concern to affection in a blink of an eye. ‘From the moment he walked into the corner shop where I worked. I thought he was my prince. But I never dreamed I could deserve his love.’

  ‘Deserve his love? Jane, you could have any man you wanted!’

  Jane smiled brightly, but there was sadness in her eyes. ‘I didn’t look like this then, remember. You never saw the old, Plain Jane. I was about your height and a couple of stone heavier. No one, especially not me, would ever have thought Julio could love me. But he saw something “remarkable” in that teenage girl, and I’ve worked hard to live up to how he sees me, ever since.’

  For a few minutes, they fell back into a companionable silence. Then Faith felt ready to confide her feelings.

  ‘I felt like that with this American. When I looked down at him, his face camouflaged with black paint, his features twisted in pain, I felt something. He is no prince. He is a savage – a cold, killing machine. I witnessed him in action, and I have no doubts about his nature. But, even so, I feel like a part of me is in there on that operating table. And so, here I must stay, until I know he will survive.’

  ‘Oh Faith, men go to war all the time. That doesn’t make them cold-hearted killers.’

  ‘He killed two of my attackers, and wounded the third, in the space of ten seconds. Then, he demanded I finish the last one off. I couldn’t do it. My god, he has no idea what he was asking me to do! So he got me to help him to his feet, and he staggered over to the man who was groaning and writhing in agony on the ground. And, without a moment’s hesitation, he shot him dead. Just like that.’

  ‘He put him out of his misery, Faith. It was a humane thing to do.’

  ‘No, it was an efficient thing to do. No witnesses. He couldn’t leave that Nazi alive, in case he told someone about him. That was all it was.’

  ‘He didn’t have to save you. If he was on a mission, he probably did the wrong thing by deviating to save you. That is not the action of a cold, killing machine.’

  Faith considered this for a moment. Yes, she was right. A warrior would have gone about his mission, with no thought of what he had come upon. He would have seen her interrogation as a good distraction, an opportunity to make good his escape before the Nazis got on with their search. Why had he risked his life, and more importantly his mission, to save her?

  At that moment, the chief medic entered the waiting room. He was a man who looked to be in his forties, but Faith knew him to be a Newcomer who had taken on a clone no more than thirty years ago. As he was in his mid-fifties when he was Retrieved from New Delhi 2014, that made him around eighty years old. A youngster, in New Atlantean terms.

  ‘Amal, how is he?’ Faith jumped to her feet, and tried to read the medic’s face to determine his answer. His handsome, swarthy features were neutral.

  ‘The surgery reminded me of home. I have not undertaken such a complex procedure in more years than I like to remember. But he is doing well. The bullet is out. There is no other significant damage. With our technologies, he will make a full recovery in a few weeks. The nanobots are already at work.’

  Faith let out her breath in a deep sigh. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much. When will he regain consciousness? When can I see him?’

  ‘He will be awake in about half an hour. You may sit at his side until then, if you wish.’ His expression was guarded, as if her request surprised him.

  Everyone at the medical centre knew Faith, as she had been the personal assistant of Karl Ontario, the Head of Clone Research and the New Atlantis Medical Centre, right up until the time she had joined the Children’s Retrieval team a year ago. He would also know about the man on whom he just operated. In his mind, he was probably trying to put the pieces together. Who was he to her? Why was she as concerned for his recovery as a Bonded mate would have been?

  She ignored his obvious curiosity, and allowed him to lead them to the recovery ward.

  Chapter Four

  Luke’s world lightened up, and he was aware of sensation. His body didn’t hurt anymore, but it did feel heavy, as if an immense weight was piled on top of him. He could smell an odd odour – not antiseptic, but something similar and cloying. Wrinkling his nose, he tried to block the smell. There were voices too; soft, feminine voices talking. He tried to work out what they were saying.

  ‘I think he’s waking up, Faith. See, his eyelids flickered.’

  ‘It is probably REM. Amal said thirty minutes. It is only half that.’

  ‘No, I’m sure I saw them open. Look, there. He’s awake.’

  A vision appeared above him, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. It was another angel. This one had long, straight, copper-coloured hair that formed a curtain around her perfect face as she leaned over him. Her eyes were those of a doe, elongated and green, and they twinkled with interest.

  ‘Hey, Yank, welcome back from the dead.’ If he had expected to hear anything from this angel, it was not that. Her accent was Australian, and her slang was very familiar.

  Her face disappeared, and th
e angel who had saved him was the next to appear. ‘I am glad you are recovering. I was extremely concerned.’

  Recovering? Back from the dead? What were they talking about? Wasn’t this Heaven? Didn’t that mean he was dead? It hurt his head just thinking about it.

  ‘Relax, I can see you are confused. Do you remember saving me from those Gestapo agents?’ His beautiful angel soothed him with her words and a gentle stroke of his cheek with her hand. Her fingers were cool and soft, just as he expected them to be.

  He tried to answer her, but his voice wasn’t working, so he simply nodded. She smiled back at him. And he was dazzled by the sight. He had thought her beautiful before, but smiling, she became sublime. It was as if the sun was shining down on him.

  All par for the course for angels, he supposed. But it would be a long time before he took such smiles for granted.

  ‘You were shot, and the bullet lodged close to your heart. The surgeon has removed it, but you will feel sore and sorry for yourself for a few days.’

  A few days? After a major op? How could she sound so accepting of it, as if such a miracle happened every day? But to her, they did, he supposed.

  ‘You are in a hospital of sorts. And you will find this world decidedly different to the one you have left. But please, know that you are safe now. Nothing can hurt you here.’ Her lovely English accent, with its slightly formal phrasing, appealed to him. It could have sounded starchy; but on her lips it just sounded lady-like.

  ‘Light… I saw a light.’ His voice found, he struggled with his dry mouth and spongy tongue to form words. To his ear, his voice sounded like crunching gravel.

  ‘Yes, you did. That was the Portal to my world. A gateway of sorts.’

  It made sense. That light people reported when they thought they were dying was a gateway to Heaven. But why did he need an operation if he was dead? It made no sense.