Epoch (The Templar Future Book 1)

by Lowry, Chris

  The prisoner backed against the wall, gun held at his side.

  “You said I could trust you.”

  “You can,” she said, but knew as the words left her mouth that he wouldn’t. Harry’s need for retribution had ruined any chance of that. How could she convince the man she meant for it to be better.

  “We still don’t know your name,” she said. “Tell me your name.”

  He watched her, but didn’t miss the Troops lining up against the wall, or the guns leveled at him. He bought time, needing to think, hoping to make a good show of himself in his death.

  “I’m Twelve,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “Not how long you’ve been a knight. What do people call you?”

  “Twelve. I’m the Twelfth high commander.”

  “You’re a leader?” She edged closer to Harry’s crumpled body, motioning the med team to attend him.

  She noticed the ripped and brutalized Jumpsuit and almost lowered her gun.

  “Did you do this?” she waved toward the Suit.

  “You sent him to attack me while I rested.”

  “No, I mean did you damage his Suit?”

  The Templar glanced at the torn metal shell.

  “That’s what happens in battle,” he explained to her as if she were a child.

  It was the way most men spoke to her, treating her like a subordinate instead of a seasoned campaigner. She didn’t like it.

  “I know what happens in battle. I wanted to know how you did it. How did you break the Suit?”

  She heard muttering in the ranks behind her and silently cursed herself for breaking their discipline. They hadn’t noticed Harry’s Suit until she pointed it out.

  The medics covered him with a mylar blanket and carried him through the line. None of the Troops had ever seen a Suit damaged before, hardly creased after an encounter with the Mob, much less shredded off a Trooper’s body. Doubt ate away at their confidence as they each wondered, what manner of man could do this?

  Nova felt the tone of the room change and she knew she had to wrestle control back from this man. She watched him grow as they shrank.

  “Twelve!” she said, pitching her voice to command level. “Drop your weapon. We will take you into custody.”

  He was twice as big as her.

  “Chain me back up? Not on your life, sister. Your little boys don’t scare me. Do your best.”

  He was a giant now, almost nine feet tall and as wide as a door. He crouched like a feral beast, ready to fight, the battle gleam burning in his eyes like a small supernova.

  Nova felt the men behind her shift closer to the door. The room was too small for a pitched battle with something so big.

  How did he grow so fast. He was a man, wasn’t he. She bit her tongue to control her fear, aimed her gun at his head.

  “We don’t want to hurt you!” she said, wishing her voice didn’t crack.

  “Those pop guns don’t hurt,” he smiled, his canines long and sharp. The tips of his teeth hung over the bottom lip like a demon from their worst nightmares. Muscles bulged under the torn bodysuit.

  But she recognized the smile. It was a smile of contempt, bestowed on her by every commander and moneymaker that stood in her way of being commander of the Troops. She fought off anger, calming herself. Anger was not a good tool to carry to battle. The smile irritated her, breaking the spell he was casting and suddenly there was the Templar in front of her again, a normal man looking weary and flushed.

  “The man acted on his own. I am not responsible for the attack on you,” she explained, holding her rifle steady. “Put down the gun and we can discuss this.”

  She hoped her example of calm was affecting the men, but she couldn’t afford to take her eyes off the Templar to check on them.

  “You cannot control your own men?” he countered. She felt something in his voice and realized he was using it against them, pitching his voice to control them, just as she had been trained.

  “And you ask for my trust,” he continued. “Who is to say these pups won’t shoot me where I stand after I put this down.”

  He lifted the gun away from his side.

  “We’ll shoot you if you don’t!” she warned.

  He laughed.

  “But if I put this down, I won’t take any of you with me.”

  The Troops muttered. She could guess their questions, after all, they had seen Harry, seen the damage. She could almost feel each of them wonder if he could carry out his orders, if this man would carry out his threats, if their thick Suits would protect them.

  Someone ran through the door, screaming.

  “Our weapons are set to stun,” she said, trying to focus their attention on her, help them stay calm. “We’ll take you alive for a trial.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m a fighter, girl. I tried to trust you, but you broke that. Stun or kill, it won’t make a difference on how many of your shells I can crush.”

  He stretched, muscles bulging like steel cords. She felt the Troops pressing back into the wall.

  “Helmets closed,” she ordered. “Full body armor, power maximum. Minimize room interference.”

  She could hear the clicks as helmets started to close.

  “We can’t beat him, Sir,” she heard Robe say before her own faceplate slid shut.

  The Templar drew down, speed and surprise his ally.

  It caught the Troops unawares and only the thick protection of their Suits saved them.

  Plasma bolts ripped into their chests, knocking them back into the wall.

  He leaped among them, they couldn’t fire for fear they would hit one of their own. The image Nova had tried to banish was back, reinforced by liquid kicks and fluid blows that dented the Suits, knocking systems off-line.

  The Templar was a wisp of smoke, a cloud closing over them, hitting and retreating, knocking down and stomping. Some men lay with broken limbs or broken Suits, unable to respond to simple commands.

  They had been trained by the best, Bram and his team of experts. But hand to hand combat had taught them their Suits were the answer when all else failed. The Suits could be relied upon as a shelter until help arrived, protection from even the most severe punishment. Their entire education was based on the Suit. And as their knowledge crumbled, they collapsed as a unit and couldn’t recover.

  Alone, Robe flanked Nova, trying to cover her. She rested the rifle on his shoulder, waiting to the Templar to get clear of the flailing bodies that surrounded him. Even as he demolished her men, she marveled at him, at his strength, at his quiet determination.

  He didn’t waste air, screaming a primitive battle challenge at them this time. He worked methodically, even a bit poetic, she thought, moving from one Trooper to the next, no blow wasted, no extra effort expended.

  And he didn’t kill, she noted through her external sensors. He crippled, he knocked into oblivion, he dismantled, but none of the men he worked his way through was dead.

  “He’s not killing them,” warned Robe, caught between hero worship and loyalty to the squad. This man, without a Suit and even his one weapon drained of energy, walked among the Troopers like the specter of death, picking and choosing his victims with a direct randomness based on perceived threat.

  Robe was awed even more by his restraint.

  So was Nova. The prisoner had no reason to trust her, no reason for restraint against the men lined up to kill him.

  Yet time and again, he stayed his hand, pulling short a blow that would break a neck, holding back a kick that would snap a spine.

  For his part, the Templar wasn’t aware of his admirers.

  He only knew tired. Exhaustion held his hand more than restraint. And the Troops seem endless, even though he had counted forty as they came into the room. He finished off all but two, the Commander girl and the boy.

  They were against the far wall, rifles held on him and he knew he couldn’t reach them before they shot him. Surrender wasn’t an option.

  �
��I’ve got you,” Nova warned. “Give up now, or I will shoot.”

  He coiled and leaped, trying to flip, but clumsy in his spent state. He landed off balance, crouched near a felled soldier. He had to roll and grab for a fresh rifle, cursing the seconds it cost him.

  Robe watched the man leap like a gazelle, flying halfway across the room and rolling in the most beautiful configuration he had ever seen, graceful as a ballerina. The rifle seemed to grow from his hands, like magic and he marveled at the crimson beam that sliced through the room and slammed into his chest, knocking his systems off-line and pulling him from the world of the conscious.

  “Who has who?” he toyed with Nova. They stared at each other over the end of rifle barrels.

  “I wouldn’t believe it, if I didn’t see it,” Bram called from the doorway. A fresh Platoon flanked him.

  “You did all this yourself?”

  “Shoot him, Bram,” Nova ordered, unprepared to watch the Templar take apart any more of her men.

  “I want to know how he did it,” her Second countered.

  “Shoot him now,” she ordered. The Troops raised their guns.

  She watched the Templar sigh.

  “I’m tired,” he said and pounced at them again.

  Plasma beams ripped the air apart, an almost solid curtain of red.

  They caught the prisoner mid-air, turned him around and slammed him to the floor. Beam after beam settled on him, drilling into his skin.

  He didn’t scream. He took aim, slowly and fired a final shot.

  The beam hit Nova full on the faceplate, cracking the helmet off her head. She fell to the floor, darkness claiming her.

  Before she closed her eyes, she saw Bram sprint across the floor, running for her. She saw the Templar’s still form not too far from her. She saw how handsome she thought he was. She hoped Bram had used stun, she still wanted to talk to him.

  “Twelve,” she whispered and drifted off.

  Bruce hurried down the hall, the throbbing in his injured arm barely matching the headache that pounded in his skull. He could have had the medical computers stitch his arm up and dump a load of painkillers in his blood until he healed. But he chose the cast and accompanying pain as a badge of honor, using every opportunity available to him to tell his side of the story.

  He had already sold two separate articles to the papers, purporting the “truth” about the new visitor from the past. No matter that the papers were gossip rags passed around the most bored and least literate circles of society. Their money was just as green as the next person’s.

  He hoped Dr. Darwin hadn’t gotten wind of it yet. Bruce still wanted to press him for more information, milk his mind of semi-technical jargon he could sprinkle in the text for added authenticity. Darwin wouldn’t approve of the dissemination of information or the manner in which Bruce was choosing to do so. If the old man heard about it, Bruce was off the team, and probably out of the Academy.

  “I deserve this,” he told himself.

  After all, the Templar had damaged him, destroyed his lab bare handed and emotionally scarred the young assistant. He still had images of the giant man striding across the room like a demon from the deepest pits of Hell, ripping apart all reason and meaning in his world.

  He patted his injured arm, adjusted the bandage for the best optical effect and went into the lab.

  Darwin was hunched over a detached terminal in the corner, oblivious to the world, as usual. His fingers pecked like a machine gun, an advanced three finger method that could only develop from years of practice. Bruce never understood why the Doctor didn’t take a computer based training to teach himself how to type properly, but the old man was set in his ways, and besides, he was faster than most of the five finger methods in the department.

  “Doc,”

  “You’re late. Where have you been?”

  “Sorry, I had to go by the nurse and-”

  Darwin shut the terminal off and booted the laptop.

  “I don’t want your excuses, I want your time. You’re scheduled to be with me during this hour?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Bruce looked around the room. This lecture took place every two weeks or so, just about anytime Bruce was late and Darwin was in a piss poor mood. He barely caught the last part of the final sentence. It had changed.

  “We’re going to do what?”

  Darwin lowered a pair of glasses on his nose.

  “I have to check on him. The news feed claim that the Troops will convene a trial this afternoon,” Darwin continued.

  “They caught him?”

  Darwin shoved the laptop into a small shoulder pack, stuffed full to overflowing with an accumulation of junk. He had to force the cover closed, and even then it was a struggle Bruce wondered if he had won.

  “Where have you been keeping yourself?” Darwin put a sweater on over his lab coat, then a parka on top of that.

  “They’re moving too fast. They can’t try him yet,” Bruce defended. Only the Mob was tried quickly, if they even made it that far, and usually were sentenced and executed on the same day. Other people were given a series of hearings where probabilities were played out in computer simulations and sentence passed after a lengthy debate.

  Darwin waved him off.

  “He’s a random factor. They don’t have enough information about him, the Main Terminal cannot simulate an answer. His assault on virtually the entire community is considered Mob mentality.”

  “They’ll kill him.”

  “Not if we can give them information. We can stop them.”

  “But he tried to kill us-” Bruce started to argue. Even as the Doctor went to the defense of the Templar, Bruce’s gears were turning.

  The info-zettes would pay huge money for the exclusive on this story. And all Trooper trials were behind closed doors. Bruce had an “in” as the assistant and as a character witness. He could retire on this alone.

  “I’ve got a car outside, we can take it,” he said.

  Darwin stopped.

  “When did you get a car?”

  Bruce looked at the Doctor, his mind racing.

  “My aunt died, left me some money.”

  “I’m sorry, boy,” Darwin clapped him on the shoulder. The expression of sympathy was new, Bruce felt a tinge of guilt. The bond between him and the Doctor was the first in their relationship. The guilt gnawed at his stomach, but Bruce was able to ignore it. Mostly.

  The energy bonds weren’t the problem. The small cramped metal box that bound his torso, exposing his arms and legs spread eagle against the wall wasn’t that bothersome. Even the brace that forced his head back almost forty five degrees didn’t worry him.

  Even before he completely woke up, he knew he could break free from them all. Year after year of training had forced an instinct for self preservation in him he could neither acknowledge or claim credit for. He was a survivor, a product of his times and environment, and so in tune with his body and the way it interacted with his surroundings that the slightest temperature change from an approaching body let him know he was not alone.

  He didn’t need to look to feel them. He could smell where they were. To the left, behind him a huddle of three men, little more than boys with that post pubescent scent that whispered of too many solo rendezvous with fantasy women after lights out. Beyond them, two others, older, anger stronger than fear wafting toward him. Men who knew how to fight, he marked them for danger and shifted his attention.

  Across the room from him, the man who he had broken in the car. He was healed now, bruised still but moving as if nothing occurred. The Templar thought to ask, but bit his tongue. His leaders had repeatedly warned him about a curious nature, it would only cause trouble.

  If he cared to consider it, curiosity was the reason for his being here. Eleven, his Master, wanted to skip the tiny village, raid an outlying farm for stock and vegetables instead. But he argued that the village was soft, ripe for the plucking. It was rumored that a repository of ancient weapo
ns and books was housed under a central hut in the center of the commons. Word floated down the river about such a place, a fortress of new design and methods of destruction.

  Eleven held out against him, pointing out the lack of defenses as a reason for this not to be the place. But Twelve held out, and the men sided with him. The chance for plunder and mayhem against such an easy and obvious target was too tempting to pass. Twelve led them into battle against the village and fell against a superior force.

  The Templar’s were routed by villagers trained in ancient ways of battle. Instead of relying on brute force like the soldiers, the villagers used tactics, an outdated concept that had been disregarded in factor of a more direct approach. The advance line of Templars fell into the villagers meager defense, screaming battle cries as it crumbled and retreated. They pushed through the middle, stretching out their lines. The two flanks of defense closed like an iron claw. Eleven fell in the first wave, carrying three villagers to the beyond with him.

  They might have won free, their ragged armor protecting those left, but a hill on the far side of the encampment was too much of an enticement. Twelve knew that the villagers had to have something to hide. Why else would they fight with such zeal, such furor. His men agreed.

  They hacked a path to the hill, wreaking havoc, losing many but killing more. The villagers were fanatical in an attempt to stop the advance. Twelve could taste bitter-sweet victory.

  Something slammed them from the side. Women and children poured from the woods to fight beside the village men, sheer numbers crushing the Templar force. The battle was horrendous, pushing up the hill. His brethren fell, left and right, dragged down and ripped to shreds, spent blaster rifles torn from their hands and used as clubs. Even as they died, each Templar would take two or three villagers with him, ripping out a child’s throat, cracking a mother’s neck, biting the jugular of a body on top of them with their last strength.

  Until he was the only one left. At the top of the hill, he didn’t have time to look, but he knew the entire Troop lay spread up the incline. He knew that the villagers would take him, and he would never know why they fought so hard. It ate him up inside, feeding rage that churned in him. He prepared himself for death, vowing to take as many villagers with him as he could. If they wanted to die for their secret, he would oblige.