Epoch (The Templar Future Book 1)

by Lowry, Chris

  “Nice hair cut.”

  “You like?” He stared at his pale reflection in the glass, admiring his trim waist and the tight fit of his fatigues. “I’m getting ready for a new . . . phase of my job.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I heard about your new toy on the fifth level and we need to talk about it.”

  “I’m handling it,” she replied tersely.

  Webster leaned across the front of the desk.

  “Not what I hear.”

  She didn’t like his confidence. It wasn’t in his character.

  “You watch your tone with me,” she threatened. “I’m warning you.”

  “I’m warning you, Ms. Laud. I like you. I think you’re a fine woman and a decent leader of your organization. But my superiors do not like what they hear. It’s all over the vids and net about this new guy. No one knows where he came from, no one know who he is. He’s not trained by anyone we know. Yet his picture is plastered on every monitor in the city. They’re studying his combat moves in do-jo’s trying to imitate him. I’ve even got an e-mail from a toy company wanting to put out a line of dolls based on him. Now, you tell me, who is he?”

  “We don’t know. Exactly. Yet. But we’re working on it.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Kill him.”

  Nova did a double take.

  “You just wanted to know who he is.”

  “Sure the money men would like to know all about him. As a matter of fact, they want to incorporate some of him into the Suits and Troops. But they also want him dead,” Webster sat back in a chair across from her.

  “Before now, everyone studied Troop fighting. Everyone bought Troop toys. We were the hottest thing going, the most marketable thing in any consumer’s mind.”

  She glared at him.

  “Then why were they going to cut our funding?”

  Webster shrugged.

  “Everybody loves a comeback. You and the bodyguards would be phased out, still do your work out of charity and good heart and popular opinion would demand you back in. The public relations on this would be out of this world.”

  “You can’t play with us like that.”

  “I didn’t come up with the idea. Blame the Main Terminal. I’m just a peon following orders. And you better follow one of your own. Kill the prisoner. Put it on the vids. Show him as a threat to the world as we know it. I’ll get a biographer to put out his story. He was a Trooper that didn’t follow the prescribed path, a rogue agent from a border patrol in the Interior.”

  She held up a copy of an info-zette with Bruce’s by line in it.

  “The assistant all ready told the story.”

  Webster waved it off.

  “Him? He’s a second rate hack. We’ll paint him up as a pathological liar selling his grandma for beer money. Who are they going to believe? A second rate student or the Commander of the Troops?”

  Nova leaned back in her chair. She wanted to turn around, stare at the picture of Conrad for support and encouragement, but she didn’t want to turn her back on Webster.

  “When do they want him dead?” she asked.

  “The sooner the better. I want all this to go in motion ASAP. Tomorrow night,” he got up to leave.

  She sighed, massaged the side of her head.

  “Fine,” she said.

  He stopped at the door.

  “About that ordeal next week, have you picked out a dress yet?”

  Robe sat on the corner of his bed in the darkness of his room. Someone was trying to access his quarters without permission. He slowly slid a plas gun from the holster on his hip and pointed it at the door.

  A shadowy figure quickly slipped through the entryway and shut off the light from the hall. Robe silently cursed himself for looking at the light, now he couldn’t make out anything in the darkness.

  “I’ve got my Suit on, infra-red shows you’re awake.”

  The voice was half teasing and menacing. Robe lowered his pistol.

  “Pip, what the Hell are you doing here?”

  She unfastened her helmet and dropped it in a chair. She crawled over the single berth to sit beside him.

  “Rumor’s going crazy on what went down between you and the Commander. I came to make sure you were all right.”

  He leaned against her.

  “I’ve been reprimanded, put on probation. They may even take me off track, Bram says they groom two or three successors at a time and I’ve blown my ride.”

  Pip put her arm around his shoulder, cradling him to the lukewarm breastplate that covered her chest.

  “Don’t listen to him. That’s a classic scare tactic, like the one the prisoner used on all of us. I rescanned the vids into my Suit. He wasn’t really big and scary, but I remember him that way. I hope the computer can analyze that. It’d be a neat trick to have.”

  Robe sighed.

  “What is it about him? You think he hypnotized me into wanting to be on his side?”

  “You tell me.”

  “No, you tell me. You felt it too. Everyone in the room felt it, except Darren and he’s so full of hate toward the guy right now. We all knew the Templar was opening up to us. He was on out side, ready to listen. It’s like all the diplomacy classes we took were actually working. A small group of us sitting down with the enemy and discovering he’s just like us. Tell me you didn’t feel that.”

  “I felt it,” she answered. “So did Baker and Tommy and Ju. We were there with you. The vids caught it. The Commander will look over them and they’ll reinstate you.”

  He rolled away from her to face the wall.

  “I don’t care about that.”

  She lay across the bed, pulling him down beside her until they curled together in the fetal position.

  “You don’t want to be Commander? With me as your Second?”

  “She told me they are going to kill him.”

  Pip pulled away from him, sat up.

  “They can’t do that. You saw how he was talking to us, I mean, we reached him.”

  Robe sat up beside her. He grabbed her hands and held them in his lap.

  “Now you see. What can I do? What can we do? I reached out to him, he trusts me. We were on the path and now the stupid Computer says he’s a random factor and has to be destroyed.”

  “We’ll enter new data,” she argued. “We’ll get the Computer to change it’s mind.”

  He motioned to the muted, glowing screen on the corner of his desk.

  “I’ve been at it all night. Access denied on all files. The Main Terminal refuses to take any more information on him. Decision final.”

  “That’s not right. We don’t kill people. Not for just any old reason, we have to . . .” she looked at Robe for reassurance. “We can’t do this. We can’t just sit around and wait.”

  He ran a finger under her chin.

  “Don’t you think I know that.”

  She jumped up, scooped her helmet off the chair.

  “I’ve got an idea. We’ll bust him out.”

  Robe stood up, held her by the shoulders.

  “I’ve thought of that too. I don’t know if we’re ready to take the chance. They’re going to do it in a few hours and we don’t have time to plan anything.”

  “I think I know something,” she handed him a disc from a panel on her Suit. “Run this program off the Mainframe on a subdirectory. Don’t save or alter it. Just study the schematics.”

  “What is it?” he popped the disc into the disc drive on his desk.

  “It’s this building. We’ll get him into the utility tunnels. They run on every floor. It’ll be easy to get him out from there.”

  Robe laughed.

  “Yeah, but how do we get him into the tunnels?”

  She flashed him a smile before sealing her helmet.

  “Some Commander you are, you worry too much.”

  She pressed his nose against the faceplate on her helmet.

  “No wonder the Second has so much power. We can do this without gettin
g caught. I’m going to get Ju and Baker to help. I’ll be back here in thirty minutes. You just be ready to go.”

  “Go what?”

  “You know what,” she shoved him playfully on the bed. “We’re breaking him out. That’s the right thing to do. After that, we’ll get him clear and go back to our lives.”

  He stood up, stopped her from leaving.

  “And if we get caught?”

  She shook him off and moved for the door, sure footed in the darkness.

  “We won’t be coming back here.”

  She slipped through the door as quietly as she came in, locking it behind her. Robe sat on the edge of his bed and thought about what she said. He almost went after her, to tell her to forget the whole thing, that this one man wasn’t worth it. But something inside him told him that it was. This one man had connected with the small group and Robe had pledged his safety. Pride was one thing, justice another. He would save the prisoner on principal, because that’s what his heart told him to do. If he was caught, he was ready to accept the consequences.

  “That’s what being a leader is all about,” he said to the Computer as he booted up the disc Pip had left. Doing an action and prepared to accept the results. He studied the blueprints on the screen in the darkness, searching for a flaw, a pathway, or both.

  Darwin sat outside of the judgment hall, rocking his left foot back and forth in impatience. He had arrived early, hoping to catch a moment with the Templar before he was carried through the corridor. Not a chance. A tight press of bodies surrounded the prisoner, blocking him from access. The massive group shuffled forward, the Templar in the very center of the press. Five rifles held by different Troopers were held against his head. Four other had pistols jabbed into his neck. The Templar had to trust the crowd to lead him, because one Trooper shoved a pistol barrel in each eye. But he held himself tall, refusing to even give the slightest hint of weakness.

  “Templar!” Darwin yelled and all eyes in the hall turned to him. He tried to push through, but the people wouldn’t part and the prisoner was hauled through the doors. Darwin fought past them, sliding between the bodies, sucking in his stomach to squeeze closer. The doors slid shut in his face. He leaned his head against the cool metal, tired.

  A hand grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around.

  “Excuse me, are you Dr. Darwin?”

  A young, fresh faced Trooper stood in front of him, impressive in his spit shined Jumpsuit.

  “I have permission to be here,” Darwin stated, reaching for his credentials.

  “Yes sir. I’m not here for that,” the Trooper looked around at the other guards in the foyer. “May I have a moment?”

  The crowd pressing around the door had cleared out some, waiting now for the Trial to be over. The guards were relaxed, if vigilant in the four corners of the room.

  “What’s this about?”

  “My name is Robe. I’m a friend of the Templar.”

  Darwin’s eyebrows shot up, skepticism evident in the way he held himself.

  “We spent the whole night talking,” Robe ignored the attitude. “My Commander came down three times to check on us. She ordered me to leave. That’s when I knew. This whole thing today, it’s a kangaroo court. A fiasco.”

  Darwin hid his shock in a knowing nod. He had suspected as much. He looked around for Bruce to give him an “I told you so.”

  “How do you know?” he asked Robe instead.

  “I don’t know. But I have reason to believe they will execute the Templar. The Troops have a big fund raiser next week, and his appearance and attack has put us in a bad light. Our advisors are afraid that anything less than his death will make us look weak. At least, that’s the word going around.”

  Robe cast about, watching both ends of the corridor. Pip stepped through he far doorway and nodded, the signal for all clear.

  “I found you Dr., because I’m going to ask for your help. If you won’t help, then I’m asking for your silence.”

  Darwin smiled, quickly piecing together a hypothesis in his mind. He was a trouble shooting genius, and problems of this magnitude fairly set his brain on fire. There was only one way the young man could go.

  “You’re going to set him free.”

  Robe nodded.

  “But how can you trust me?”

  “You were the one who brought him here. You wanted to study him, right? And you checked on him after we brought him in. I assumed you cared about his welfare. Was I right?”

  Darwin now smiled at the boy.

  “You were. And how do you propose we free him?”

  Pip motioned with her hand and scuttled through the crowd to stand beside Robe.

  “Third squad,” she said and kept walking.

  Robe leaned close to Darwin.

  “Will you help us?”

  He started walking away.

  “When?”

  “I’m not sure,” Robe whispered over his shoulder. “But you’ll know.”

  Darwin watched them round the corner, one at a time, nodding to the guard who watched the crowd. Third squad filed into the hallway and positioned themselves in front of the doorway, gently pushing Darwin back to a chair by the wall.

  He sat down, leaned back and wondered how he was going to help.

  An impressive array of Computer banks filled the wall from floor to ceiling, lights flashing in a hypnotic bizarre pattern unknown to all in attendance.

  The Templar was hauled into the room and deposited in a shallow depression in the middle of the bare steel floor. He was surrounded by Troopers in Jumpsuits, spread an armlength apart against the wall. Each Trooper held a rifle trained on him.

  Nova Laud, wearing a special gold Suit walked in a door hidden flush with the far wall, followed by Bram in a jet black Suit.

  The Templar appeared relaxed on the floor.

  “All this for one man?” he asked, smiling.

  “You’ve proven yourself worth it,” she answered.

  “Glad to see you’re healing,” the Templar turned to Bram.

  “You’ll get yours,” Bram spoke through clenched teeth. His fingers traced the butt of the pistol strapped to a panel on his thigh.

  “You shouldn’t make a wager when you don’t know the game,” the Templar advised, lacing the fingers of both hands behind his head.

  “Is that some Templar mumbo jumbo?”

  “Common knowledge,” he shot back. “Do you touch the bug you don’t know?”

  “We’re going to crush you like a bug.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s right,” said Nova, moving to stand opposite of the Templar and Bram. She faced the Computer banks.

  “Our benefactors can’t afford to have you around,” she said without looking at him. “You take away too much from our image, you endanger our financing and that’s our existence. I won’t have my Troops disbanded for a single anomaly, no matter how intrigued I may be.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “I didn’t think you would be,” she smiled, trying to hide it from him.

  “You should be,” said Bram from his other side.

  The Computer’s normal hum and clicks went up a level. A collective sigh was released as it spit out page after page of information onto a collection tray.

  The Templar wanted to ask what was going on, what was this thing he stood in front of, but he held his silence, maintaining the facade. Questions, no matter the basis in general curiosity, would be seen as a weakness, and he couldn’t afford that.

  Death did not scare him, but neither did he desire it. His blood burned to fight, to break free and the battle rage boiled just below the surface. He suspected they would kill him. he knew that this court was a gesture, a throw back to some time when justice really may have been served. But now, he would spend five minutes waiting for a pronouncement, preparing himself for when they would choose to move. They would take his life, but the price paid, he swore to himself, would be tenfold.

  Nova moved to the sor
ting bin, knowing full well what the judgment would be. Webster had made it plain that the Money didn’t like the way it made the Troopers look to keep getting beat by one man, impervious as he was to all their methods. Better to kill him in front of the vid screens, record it for playback over and over to prove the superiority of the Troops and their Jumpsuits.

  The room was quiet as she read the verdict to herself.

  “You move your lips when you read,” the Templar called out.

  She felt herself blush. It was the voice of a classroom bully some thirty years ago, breaking past barriers so old and buried so deep, she forgot they had been erected. One of the Troopers ranged along the wall giggled, setting off a small series of snickers and guffaws.

  “He knows,” she thought, trying to see past the glamour he was throwing, wondering if it was conscious of not. “He knows we’re going to kill him and he’s trying to beat it.”

  “All men, ready your arms,” she ordered.

  She held the paper up and read aloud.

  “A series of equations regarding your existence has been fed to the Master Terminal in an attempt to determine what role you would play in our future. We entered in all the available information on your actions, and what we knew of your past, all the vids on your interaction with us in battle and conversations. It has been determined that you are a threat, and no matter what promises you may make, you will remain a threat to our way of life. You represent a parasite that will feed off of our peaceful society and bring about actions that we will regret. Therefore, it is the decision of all parties involved that your existence be terminated to end any threat you may pose.”

  She looked around the room.

  “The motion has been raised by the Main Terminal, I put it on the floor before you.”

  “I second,” Bram said.

  “How find you?”

  In one voice the Troops shouted.

  “We agree.”

  “And the sentence death?”

  “It is merciful,” the room echoed with their yell.

  She held the paper up again.

  “The sentence to be carried out-” she faltered. “This can’t be right.”

  She looked at Bram.

  “It says immediately. We never carry out immediately.”