by Lowry, Chris
The Templar ignored him. He crouched low as the two Troopers made the lab, and tackled them, smashing them to the floor. He took their pistols off their Suits and eyed the material with curiosity.
Harry stirred, and the Templar bolted like a deer.
Darwin heard him run through the hall, felt the door vibrate under heavy thuds. It fell from it’s hinges and crashed to the ground.
“Oh dear,” he worried. “Isn’t he magnificent.”
“He did what? Is Harry all right?” Nova Laud paced the vast floor in her office. “Where did he go? Then double the watch, find him!”
She tossed the cell phone into her chair, frustration creasing a small line between her eyebrows. Conrad’s portrait stared at her, relentless and demanding. She took a deep breath, forcing a calming technique into her tired muscles.
Bram appeared from nowhere, working strong hands over her shoulders and neck.
“That’s right,” he whispered, using the voice they were all taught, slow and measured. “Begin with the end and work your way in.”
She smiled and patted his hands, moving away to stare over the brightly lit cityscape.
“You know who that was?”
“I don’t have ESP,” he answered.
“Could have fooled the rest of us,” she smiled at him over her shoulder. “That was dispatch. Harry got busted up at the Academy research lab.”
She could read the disbelief in his face.
“Did he have a Suit on?”
“Wasn’t powered up,” she said.
“Mob?”
She shook her head.
“They’re saying it was one guy, but he took out three Troopers.”
“Impossible.”
“Know who the lab belongs to?”
He stared at her. She made him wait for a moment.
“Darwin.”
“What does he have to say about it.”
“He said the guy was a Templar Knight transported through time. His assistant confirms, but we’re running a battery of polygraphs through the Main Terminal.”
“What does it say about all this?”
“Claims it was not aware of the possibility of time travel. Doesn’t compute.”
“For me either,” Bram agreed. “I should go look at it.”
She moved to her desk and fitted a sleek holster over her shoulder.
“I was thinking the same thing.”
Bram eyed her. He smiled.
“You sure the fund-raisers want you risking your pretties if things get rough?”
She stepped up to face him.
“I can handle it.”
He swung a fist at her head. She sidestepped it.
“Besides, you’ll back me up.”
“Stay on your toes,” he warned her. “Sun won’t be up for awhile and the Mob’s still out there. They don’t care who they come after.”
“It’ll be light in an hour or so,” she rubbed her tired eyes. “We don’t find anything quick, I’m going to come home and get some sleep.”
He knew he wasn’t home by the smell of things. Not just away from home like going two or three villages over, or even traveling the wastes of the interior from one half starved settlement to another. He wasn’t on his own planet. Nothing could compare to the tumultuous chaos he met on the streets, not the screams of dying children caught in a fire, not the wails of mother’s watching or the shrieks of men cleaved in two. This was Noise and it assaulted him, knocking him first one way, then the other until all sense of up, down, right, wrong was beyond him.
Here, buildings hummed with energy fields he didn’t understand, growling like crouched animals. The bit him when he leaned against their glossy, green transparencies. There an armored monorail, that he could not name or recognize, zipped through the sky, suspended on needle thin slivers of steel. Auto Hulks lumbered through the streets, slowly forcing the crowds to part and flow back on the empty space like water once they had passed.
He tried to breath deep, but the noxious stench of unwashed human bodies nearly knocked him out. He couldn’t stand up.
And then they were upon him, pressing, pawing, pulling at him. Worse than the noise, they were a faceless mass of hands tugging at his torn armor, dragging him further and further into the midst of their movement as they surged aimlessly.
Battle rage burned in him. He fought. No weapons were at hand, so he made them. He tore a leather strap from someone’s shoulder and lay about with it like a whip, beating the mass back. It was a momentary reprieve. They came back again, and again, wave after wave threatening to overtake him.
He screamed and grabbed the first body, breaking it over his head. And then the red mist fell over his eyes, painting the lurid landscape in blood as he filled in the numbers.
He moved on top of the Mob and under them and in between, leaving a path of twisted corpses, broken, bleeding, unrecognizable.
They disappeared quickly, gone to some unknown place that even the darkest soul among them would never admit to.
He rested against the side of an energy field, ignoring the jolt it sent into him. He could barely draw a breath, and the Mob was untried, their numbers seemingly endless. Fight had been purged from him, numbness claiming his tattered senses. He had been in a running battle for almost two days before the portal brought him to this new time. He had been fighting since his arrival. Tired claimed him and he was not afraid. He had given a good battle.
And like the first picture of him the good doctor glimpsed through the time hole, he climbed on top of a pile of bodies and roared at the crowd, daring them.
“Come on!”
Darwin knew the time had come. He prepared his notes, detailing each entry with the chronicles of his adventure into the unknown. He reread over and over the preparations he underwent to build the machine and the process of opening the portal. He searched and watched the vid-copies , ransacked his ravaged office for any audio sources that may have captured a trace of information about the events. He gathered it all and stacked it neatly in a steel reinforced concrete vault. He twisted a small silver dial set in the door and locked the knowledge behind a complex combination of logarithms.
Satisfied, he sat down to a cup of coffee in front of a Trooper scanner and waited for his Templar.
Nova’s hover car flew five meters above the pocked plas-crete surface of the street. Two gunners on air bikes rode escort, flanking her rear and two other Troopers filled her back seat. With Suits on, the fit was tight, the four of them jammed in with recon gear.
Bram sat beside her, gripping the handrail with white knuckles.
“I can fly great,” she offered.
He smiled at her, stretching the corners of his mouth so wide, she knew not to believe him.
“You think you can do better?” she asked.
“I can,” Darren’s voice floated up to them from the darkness of the back.
“Who asked you,” she snapped.
Bram laughed out loud, real this time.
“It just makes us nervous to be out in the dark,” he said. “We don’t make regular patrols now.”
“We have to be out, or we wouldn’t do it at all,” she gripped the yoke with two hands, hoping this would ease their minds some.
“A leader has to inspire confidence,” she told herself. “Even if it is a running joke about the way you fly.”
“Who is this guy?” Darren asked.
“Bram, want to give them stats?” Nova concentrated on the air in front of them. The car should be safe, but it was hard to tell when the Mob might decide to snare a prize and pick it apart.
That’s what made fighting the Mob so hard they had to give it up. With most enemies, you could predict actions. With the Mob, even what little that was predictable became unexpected within moments. A disadvantage of having several thousand individual brains working against you.
Nova always nursed the private thought that if the Mob could be turned into a cohesive unit, functioning toward a common goal for g
ood, they would be unstoppable.
As it stood, her elite trained Troops were able to fend off advances and bodyguard the rich with relative ease, so long as they kept the numbers. If the Mob ever attacked in force-She let that thread run out and listened to Bram.
“Harry Gargon sent in a report from the hospital. He said his Suit was powered down when he went to a disturbance at the Research Center.
“Powered down at night,” Darren smirked. “Not likely.”
Bram continued, ignoring him.
“The Mob was giving this place wide berth when he got there. He said Dr. Darwin claims one man killed fifty or so individuals, trashed Harry and his team and moved into the streets.”
“How are we supposed to find him?” Robe was the newest recruit for the Troops, hand-picked for this Team to be groomed by Nova and Bram.
A small bell binged in the Computer.
“Files done,” said Nova.
“Look at the vids,” Bram told them.
The Templar’s massive frame filled the screen, fighting the Mob as it surged into the lab.
“Wow!” whispered Robe.
“You got that right,” Darren said. “So he did do it all by himself.”
“If you believe your eyes.”
They watched until the man was caught in the hall and busted in the door.
“He can do that to plas-steel?” Robe looked worried. “How are we going to stop him?”
Nova answered.
“We’re not. We’re going to talk to him, reason him into submission. If what the Doctor told us is true, and this man is a time traveler, he’s scared and confused. We won’t afford him time to adjust.”
“If he’ll let us,” gulped Robe.
“Don’t talk like that,” shot back Darren.
“He’s right,” Nova tried to bolster their courage. “Be positive. Remember your mantra.”
Instantly the men fell into a pre-battle trance, searching inward for strength and peace that would keep their heads straight in the upcoming fight. It was part of a strict regimen taught to all the Troop recruits and had worked wonders for years. All things began with belief in oneself and team. Everything else just worked after that.
“How are we going to find him?” asked Robe again, looking serene and confident.
“We got a signature on his vitals before he left the lab. We’ll pinpoint him and drop in.”
Bram watched them from the corner of his eyes.
“He’s not like the rest of the cattle. If the vid’s are true, this one’s a warrior. Our Suits won’t put the scare in him like they do them.”
“He won’t be expecting the Suits,” said Nova. “They’ll absorb the punishment he’ll deal and then we’ll take him in.”
“Best laid plans-” Bram said quietly.
“What?” she asked.
The dash beeped again, a steady pulsing throb.
“We found him,” she eased the car into a dive.
“An old saying,” was all he would answer.
“Would you look at that,” Robe couldn’t hide the awe in his voice.
The others agreed. What looked like hundreds of bodies were piled into a mound. On top was the Templar, swinging at the shattered remains of what once was a Mob assault.
Mangled bodies littered the roadway, and even as Nova watched, he grabbed up a man and twisted his life away. He threw the dead weight at another, knocking him backwards in a snap she could almost feel.
She shook herself out of it.
“He’s just a man,” she reminded them. “Let’s go.”
She popped the hydraulics on the cockpit and the canopy flipped back. They donned their helmets, sealing off the world with a hiss. Systems checks took seconds, and an all clear green light lit up the visor.
“Gunner One, hold cover. Gunner Two, follow us in,” she commanded.
She didn’t wait for assent. All Troopers were taught to follow orders. She leaped over the side of the car, hitting the retro rockets in her boots and landing softly at the base of the pile of bodies.
The Templar watched with glazed bloodshot eyes, trying to asses this new threat. His breath came in quick, ragged pants, blood dripping from scratches and gouges. She surmised that most of it was not his.
Bram, Robe, and Darren settled in behind her. She clicked the loudspeaker on her intercom.
“Knight. We do not want to fight you. We want to take you to rest.”
Her internal speaker picked up Darren’s transmission.
“Watch him, he’s a big one.”
The Templar shook his head, as if he was waking up. He stared around at the mayhem surrounding him.
“Come with us,” urged Nova.
He took a step toward them and pitched forward, sliding down the jumbled mass to land roughly at their feet.
Bram and Robe took position on him, holding their energy rifles at ready.
“Is he alive?” asked Robe.
Nova ran a vitals on him. He was breathing, his heart rate too fast but within range. Adrenaline registers were off the charts, she had to recalibrate to read it.
“He passed out. He’s been running on nothing for awhile, it looks like.”
Darren glared at the bodies around them, the Mob starting to gather at the edge of the shadows.
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
Bram took over, slinging the thick body across his back. He sagged under the weight.
“We better get out of here.”
Nova heard the rumbling growl of the Mob and agreed. As one, the four Suits leaped into the air and settled in the car.
“Where the Hell we going to put him?” Darren laughed as they stuffed themselves into the back seat.
Fuzzy memories knocked about the cracks at the edge of his periphery, tugging him toward pain and consciousness. The lab, the Mob, the streets, the fight all swirled in and about in his mind. He couldn’t tell real from past and tried to lash out at the thoughts that fought him.
He couldn’t move.
Arms and legs wouldn’t respond, but it didn’t matter since the memories could not hit.
He remembered looking up, a glance lasting only a second, enough to register the four flying figures in full armor, a coat of arms he had never seen, a style of protection he had never known or battled with. They were floating down not far from him, but the Mob was here. He tended to them, wiping away the last of the attackers. So long as the new creatures didn’t threaten, he wouldn’t kill them.
Now he was among them, tired weighing on him like some live creature, pressing the breath from his body and holding him down, cluttering up his normally clear mind. He tried to speak, his tongue huge in his mouth.
“I think he’s awake.”
Sounds, but no words. He massaged his tongue against his teeth and gums, spreading moisture around the dry sandpaper feel of his mouth and tried again.
“Who are you?”
A young man next to him leaned over and smirked.
“That’d be a better question for you to answer.”
A dangerous looking man in the front turned around.
“Want to tell us about you?”
The Templar gauged his captors, sizing them up, but the armor they wore made it almost impossible. Only their eyes and the lines on their faces told him stories he could read. The rest was obscured by the smooth lines of a material he didn’t recognize.
The black man in the front seat tugged at the energy bonds around his chest.
“I’m Bram. What do people call you?”
The Templar was quiet. He had to have more information, more facts before he could go on. To fight was useless if you did not know who or what you fought. He could not know these enemies yet, so he had to wait, evaluate them. He watched Bram.
“He won’t talk,” a woman said from the front.
The other man crammed next to him leaned over, shoving him into Robe.
“Sure he will. Just ask him again,” said Darren.
He pulled a
small plasma gun from somewhere and shoved it into the Templar’s neck.
Finally, an object he knew, a threat perceived. It wasn’t a model he was familiar with, but a threat none the less. A pistol retained its main purpose no matter the shape or size. It fires, that is what it is made for. The Templar thought about this as he stretched against his energy bonds.
“He’s trying to get free,” squealed Robe.
“He can’t break the bonds,” said Bram.
Robe wasn’t so sure. Their captive was red, almost purple with effort and the color of the energy bonds had shifted from green to yellow.
Darren still pressed the pistol into his neck, but the man didn’t seem concerned with it.
He wasn’t. Every thought and level of energy was focused on stretching the bonds, flexing the muscles in his chest and arms against the restraints until the battery packs whined with the strain.
“He’s gonna do it,” shouted Robe.
The bonds popped, shattering the cockpit with a small sonic boom.
Robe tried to subdue him, but a quick elbow to the sternum on his Suit left him gasping.
Darren tried to jerk the pistol out of reach. The Templar grabbed it, aimed it at his head and pulled the trigger. The charge was empty.
Darren threw a punch. The Templar caught it. Bones cracked. The Trooper screamed.
Bram drew his pistol, leveled it at the Templar.
“My charge is full,” he smiled.
The Templar watched for a millisecond, and grabbed the gun.
Robe and Darren stopped gasping to stare.
“He took-”
“Oh no,” finished Darren.
Bram started over the seat, his moment of shock replaced with anger. No one had ever been faster than him. And he was the only one who could send a punch through a Suit and make someone feel it.
The Templar jammed the gun in Bram’s mouth.
“Sit.”
He tightened his finger on the trigger.
Darren shifted in his seat. The Templar threw a punch to the side of his head that knocked him out.
Robe stared with wide eyes, words lost.
The Templar yelled at Nova.
