Faintly sick at himself for brooding on the bridge in front of his crew, Heinrich couldn’t help but feel the hidden eyes of Mr. Delta in his white and gold robes.
He doubted how much real help his guests would be, but it could prove useful to have other Royalty aboard. And the other Monarchs demanded it.
Heinrich brought his attention back to the holographic display. This almost feels like the old days. Heinrich examined the military base with a sense of déjà vu. In this version of reality, the shinkari cannons and shields aboard The Songstress were easily a match for the crude explosive weapons positioned around the military base.
The locals’ weapons are positively quaint by comparison. Quaint or not, The Songstress’s batteries were significantly reduced from the transfer. Without shields those weapons would still tear the ship to pieces eventually. When first seeing the location of the hated Rebels in this reality, despite the energy cost, he’d energized the shields and cloaking to maximum deflection before easing The Songstress forward slowly, expecting a response.
When no response to his careful approach materialized, he commanded Anna to deploy an assassin drone to reconnoiter exactly where the Rebels were and continued studying the base. With any luck, the drone would go unnoticed and destroy the Rebels. Then he could start looking into what their purpose was in coming to this place.
Heinrich looked up as the door dilated and his adjutant Ernst stepped through, balancing a tray with an ornate tea service. The ascetic middle-aged man still possessed a rigid military bearing, despite the domesticity of serving tea.
“Mein König,” Ernst said, holding out the steaming cup. “And how goes the campaign?” he asked with easy familiarity in his heavy German accent.
Heinrich took a sip, nodding his approval. “We can’t get a clear reading. I’ve sent a drone to see if we can’t flush these Rebels out or take them unprepared.”
“Very well, Mein König. Should I instruct the kitchen to prepare a celebratory meal?” Ernst enquired.
As Heinrich was about to answer, Thalia’s calm tones interjected. “The drone has failed, Sire. I am unable to determine how it was rendered inoperable.”
Heinrich’s thoughts turned to Countess Anna. As the drone pilot, she would have suffered neural feedback from its destruction and would need time to recover before she could make her official report. No time to lose.
“Damn. Begin bombardment above the Rebels’ last known position and launch attack craft. If the batteries fall below twenty percent, call them back and begin transfer protocol. Take us out to sea and somewhere hidden,” Heinrich commanded.
Thalia relayed his orders through all sections of The Song-stress, her voice echoing through the closer hallways.
“Do you require anything further, Mein König?” Ernst asked, tucking his tray under an arm as if it were a military baton.
“No thank you Ernst. Go see if the prince needs anything, would you please?” he instructed.
Heinrich watched Ernst take his leave with a polite bow. The man nearly collided with Countess Anna as she moved unsteadily into the command room, one hand pressed to her forehead. Only an adroit step saved his adjutant from a painful encounter.
“Sire. I didn’t lose all connection. The drone may still be able to self-destruct,” Anna managed through her obvious pain.
“Do it, Thalia,” Heinrich responded with a fierce grin. “Burn them out.”
The ward was a-shambles, with gurneys and over-bed tables smashed and still-smoking shrapnel dotting the walls like violent performance art as Stanford got shakily to his feet.
The sounds of sobbing, muffled against Mack’s shoulder, continued as everyone in the room paused to take stock. Stanford knew he was in a state of shock. He’d seen the unbelievable. The girl crushed the robot with a scream and a gesture. Mack’s earlier comment repeated in his mind: “It’ll just be safer.” No shit. If she can do that, what else is she capable of?
Stanford numbly looked between the robot’s crushed remains and the teenager responsible for destroying it as Colonel Hardaker strode in with a squad of armed soldiers at his back.
“Report. Now. What just happened?” barked the colonel as his men fanned out to check the wounded and crying Nurse Simpson, who shakily tried to stem the bleeding of her wound. Aside from the cut on China’s shoulder, none of the other visitors appeared injured.
“I—I don’t know Sir,” stammered Stanford. He shook his head, trying to clear away the fuzziness in his thoughts. His distracted gaze kept returning to the compressed metal shell of the robot and wondering how she, Jay, did it.
He couldn’t help it. He was a scientist, and here was something that nothing he knew as a physicist could explain. It was like a mosquito bite. He itched with curiosity to find out how she’d accomplished it.
“I do,” replied Mack, her voice hard. She cradled Jay’s head as the waifish teen sobbed piteously.
Did that hurt her? The errant thought flickered across Stanford’s mind as he watched the inconsolable girl.
“That was a Royal assassin drone. Which means our enemies are here, hunting us,” Mack stated matter-of-factly in response to the colonel.
“Enemies,” Snake grumbled, idly rubbing an angry red elbow he’d bashed during the fight when throwing himself to one side. “That’s just brilliant. We barely know who we are and someone is trying to kill us already.”
“How did they find us? Until five minutes ago, we didn’t know where we were,” China enquired. Concern littered the tone of his voice as he applied pressure to his shoulder to slow the bleeding.
“What enemy?” demanded the colonel, focusing on the threat implied by Mack’s statement.
“The Royals. Dammit, there’s no time!” Mack yelled. “Now they’ve found us, we have to leave. Where is Sheila? They won’t stop at this. They’ll blow this facility to rubble and pick through the pebbles to find our corpses.” Mack slowly lifted Jay’s chin, looking into her dark eyes with clinical compassion. The storm of tears seemed to have passed.
As if her words spoke prophecy, the lights in the room flickered when an explosion above them rocked the facility. Stanford covered his head as another wave of impacts above them shook the concrete walls. He could barely hear their responses as klaxons echoed through the corridors, adding to the cacophony. He felt fear building, churning in his guts. Invisible killer robots, bombs; what else followed these people here?
The colonel flinched, then swore around his stogie, taking it from his mouth and throwing it to one side as an airman rushed forward. “The base is under attack!” the messenger exclaimed through heaving breaths.
Stanford watched and listened as if from a distant gallery viewing a strange play unfold on stage. Half disbelieving, he felt it all seemed to be happening to someone else as the floor seemed to shiver, and more dust drifted down through the air. He couldn’t take his eyes from the remains of the Royal drone, as if by focusing all his attention on this one thing, he could ignore everything else that was going on around him. This is real. This is real. He repeated the thought like a mental mantra in an attempt to talk himself out of shock.
Peripherally, he was aware of the colonel barking orders and the visitors crowding around the teenager. A couple of lights still blinked on and off inside the twisted and compressed mess of metal and wires that was once a human-esque, robotic death machine.
“Should those lights be blinking?” Stanford muttered aloud. No one seemed to hear him over the noise within the room. No one except the strange teenager.
Her eyes were red and puffy from crying but the alarm in them shone through.
“Get back!” the teenager shouted hoarsely at Stanford. She waved an arm, her face a mask of concentration, and Stanford yelped in surprise as invisible hands gripped his clothes and pulled him towards the group clustered around the young woman.
Time stood still as Stanford felt actual hands catch his backwards movement. With a grunt of effort from beside him on the bed, Jay rea
ched out, gesturing once again as if pressing her palms against a wall.
He held his breath as the lights on the drone flickered rapidly a mere moment before another shuddering explosion ripped across the space. Stanford squeezed his eyes shut and cowered, expecting that this explosion would be a hail of white hot metal that would tear him apart. The teenager screamed. After the span of one heartbeat when he wasn’t racked with pain, he opened his eyes to watch as the explosion, or part of the explosion, was somehow contained.
The blast, focused against the tiled side-wall, ballooned out against some restraining force. Strain was clear on Jay’s twisted features as a scream of pain tore its way out of her slender form. The wall crumpled as if struck by an enormous blow and pieces of tile and cinderblock blew into the adjoining room.
As dust filled the air amid multiple cries of pain, the lights in the room finally gave up from the repeated shocks, plunging them into immediate darkness. At Colonel Hardaker’s yells for everyone to follow him and get above ground now, Stanford began to move towards Nurse Janet and assist the airman bending to pick her up and carry her.
“Go, through there,” commanded Sarge with all the power of a battlefield order behind her words. Stanford hesitated. Go with the visitors or go with Hardaker? After insuring the airman had a steady hold of Janet, he stumbled in the direction of the hole on shaky legs. Blinking against the gritty, stinging dust, he could barely see faint green light through the hole. He made for the dim light source.
This is the lab, Stanford thought as he made it past the shattered cinderblocks. There was just enough light emanating from the instrument to make out the shape of the table where Stanford and his team had examined the visitor’s equipment.
“There! Snake, grab Sheila. Get us out of here!” Mack pleaded.
“Grab who?” The man sounded thoroughly confused.
Stanford stepped forward, almost tripping over the body of Doctor Brown. The green light in the next room made it seem she was covered in black oil, her spattered form staring into the distance with a vacant gaze. He shuddered and resisted the sudden urge to vomit as he realized the black spots were blood. Her lifeless eyes told the rest of the story.
“The instrument, dammit!” Mack screamed.
I should have insisted. I should have sent you away, Stanford thought, bending down to check for Dr. Brown’s pulse out of habit, as the last otherworldly visitor stepped into the room behind him. Sarge carried Jay, who hung, barely conscious, in her arms like a rag doll. China, hampered by his injury, started grabbing equipment and packs. Meanwhile, Snake, his hands shaking gently as if touching a lover, lifted the glowing instrument.
“DNA signature match, hello Pilot Adder. We are at thirty-one percent residual charge. Sufficient for non-dimensional transit. Are you operational?” enquired the strangely organic, yet still mechanical, feminine voice from the guitar-shaped device.
“What do I do?” Snake demanded as the floor shook from another explosion from above. “I don’t know what to do!” he yelled, his voice cracking as he looked at the others with wild eyes.
With a languid hand from within the circle of protection offered by Sarge’s arms, Jay reached towards Snake, placing a soft palm against his bearded face.
“Remember,” Jay commanded, her tone both urgent and comforting at the same time, before her head lolled back as she lost consciousness.
Snake shivered, closing his eyes as his mouth opened and shut like a goldfish. Stanford watched as strange expressions of wonder and a frown of discontent warred on his features at the teenager’s touch. It took the musician a long moment to recover.
Sarge slung Jay over her shoulder fireman-style, reaching forward to grab the rifle and whatever she could reach in the dim light. China and Mack were twin tornadoes of activity as they scrambled, scooping up equipment with frenetic haste and stuffing them into bags. Stanford knelt, frozen in place next to the body of Dr. Brown, trying to make sense of all he’d just experienced.
As he slipped the support strap over his head, an expression of confidence settled over the musician’s face. “I need coordinates! Now.” His tone was urgent.
Stanford spouted the first thing that came into his head. “22.95 degrees south, 43.21 degrees west.”
He’d been there on his honeymoon and shown his precocious older daughter on a map program not more than two weeks ago.
Snake repeated the coordinates to the machine.
“Transfer protocols initiated. Equipment and personnel for transfer identified. Pilot must generate harmonic wave pattern alpha-zero-one-nine. Passengers need to hitch with harmonic one-nine. Transfer will begin in thirty seconds, mark. You ready, Snake?”
“I get it! I remember. You need to make an intertwining harmonic wave pattern. Quick! Sing this pattern.” Snake sang a four-note melody, the sound pure and bright in the maelstrom of thundering bombardment from above.
“Snake, can anyone travel with the instrument as long as they match the harmonic wave pattern?” Stanford enquired urgently.
He tore himself away from Doctor Brown’s unresponsive body as another impact shook the facility. He hadn’t felt a pulse; she was gone, and there was no sign of Doctor Wright or the other lab technicians.
Snake slung the nearest backpack onto his unoccupied shoulder and cradled the instrument in both hands. An audible hum could be heard from within the device. Coruscating blue-gray energy began to swirl inside the resonating chamber, picking up speed.
“There’s a limit on the amount of non-hitched weight that can be carried. Jay is unconscious so she’s dead weight, along with all the equipment. Hope you can carry a tune, Stan, or this will be a bumpy ride,” Snake yelled over what sounded like the roof collapsing in the next room as dust poured in through the hole in the wall.
The Rebel guitarist moved to stand in the middle of the room, giving himself as much room around him as he could to enable everyone to get close. Stanford felt the instrument powering up, filling the air with the hair-raising sensation of static electricity.
“Transfer protocols initiated. Hitch with harmonic one-nine. Transfer in 9 … 8 … 7 … 6 …”
With a slightly furrowed brow and a gaze of brutal concentration, Snake stood at the ready, his fingers poised over the strings of the instrument, focused on the task at hand as the floor shook. Stanford prayed as he desperately repeated the musical notes in his head. The onus was on the musician to carry the others through to the other side and the enormity of that responsibility was revealed in the musician’s expression.
Then Snake rolled his shoulder and grinned like a madman, and from Stanford’s view the musician seemed to release some of the tenseness in his posture to let his reflexes take over. Snake’s fingers strummed across the air. Muscle memory, Stanford thought.
The musician’s left hand moved confidently up the neck of the guitar to the tuning knobs, performing a slap harmonic with his right. The strings sung out clearly as the shock sent the metal coils vibrating. He paused a half-second, seeming to enjoy the action, laughing at the sound. Snake then twisted the tuning knob, dropping the note and creating just the right chord.
He silenced the strings and carefully positioned his fingers. He appeared calm to Stanford, but he could hear the slight tremor imparted on the strings. Poised and ready for the completion of the countdown, Stanford took a cautiously deep breath, as did everyone else, trying not to fill his lungs with dust as they prepared to sing.
… 3 … The oscillating well of energy in the resonance chamber of the instrument extended a nest of tendrils, which rhythmically snapped quickly towards the visitors and Stanford in a staccato fashion. The group sang the notes that Snake had demonstrated, against the rising cacophony of the facility coming down around them. Blue-gray tendrils wrapped around them all, covering them in a fine net of energy that gave Stanford a tingling sensation.
… 2 … The energy expanded, forming a translucent, blue-gray, pulsing sphere that contained the group. Outside the sphe
re, sounds were muted; only the rising hum from the instrument and the rough singing of the group could be heard. What little could be seen through the translucent bubble that surrounded them appeared chaotic. Time itself appeared to slow down in the last seconds before transfer. The world outside the sphere rocked urgently, as the ceiling started to rain large chunks that ricocheted off the energy barrier.
… 1 … As Snake’s hand struck the strings, a powerful blast of energy rippled outwards from the instrument in a palpitating wave of brilliant blue. It reverberated along the tendrils and moved with a purpose both strange and wonderful, in Stanford’s eyes. It’s like looking at sound come alive, Stanford marveled as he sang the notes desperately. Everything outside the sphere disappeared from his vision and he felt himself pulled in a direction impossible to quantify.
The featureless blue-gray wall outside the transfer bubble dissipated slowly as the vibrating hum that appeared to power the bubble waned. Small tendrils of electricity lazily arced across the concrete pathway on which the group found themselves. As the instrument powered down with a soft whine, the sphere bled into the tendrils connecting everyone, and then retreated back into the machine.
Once released from the paralytic energy, Stanford curled over and started dry heaving. I’m not burnt! he exulted. Why didn’t I end up burnt like they did when they arrived? he wondered before he became oblivious to everything but his cramping stomach muscles. He tried not to heave his breakfast onto the concrete path.
Too much had happened in the last twenty-four hours, to say nothing of the last ten minutes. He was overwhelmed, he needed time to process everything.
“That. Was. Bloody. Awesome!” Snake exclaimed like the Australian rock star he was, while stroking the neck of the instrument like it was a pet who had done a marvelous trick.
The reactions of the other visitors varied. China appeared queasy while looking at the view before them in confusion. Blood dripped from his shoulder, staining the packs he carried red. Sarge remained stoic about the transfer, more concerned with her unconscious passenger. Mack shook her head, her eyes unfocused on the view.
Suffrage (World Key Chronicles Book 1) Page 5
