by Terry Mixon
The screen went blank and he took in a deep breath to settle himself. The great game was entering a very dangerous phase. If it came to war, China could crush the Americans, but only at a terrible cost.
Well, so long as the Dragon triumphed in the end, it was worth the blood and fire. Let the world burn. They would soon be leaving it behind anyway.
* * * * *
Jess wanted to rub her face, but her helmet prevented that. The flat-out impossibility of what she was seeing made her tired. This situation was not only impossible, it was ludicrously so.
Time travel? Where someone brought another Earth with them? Yeah, preposterously impossible.
They’d need to get a good reading of the continents to confirm everything under the global ice sheet matched Earth, but it was hard to dismiss a frozen planet filled with huge buildings and the bodies of people that sure looked as though they’d come from the future.
They’d examined dozens of bodies so far and the majority of them had ID from Virginia or the surrounding states. All with dates corresponding to more than two centuries in the future.
“We’re going to have to wrap this up,” she finally said. “I want everything documented in a way that won’t make Doctor Crocket lose his mind. We’ll take two bodies back with us for the medical team to examine. Let’s finish searching this floor and we’ll put a beacon on the roof to lead some follow-up teams back. Stay in pairs.”
She gestured to Ray Proudfoot and led the way deeper into the offices just off the landing platform. They’d made a single pass through, so their footprints marred the perfect sheet of frozen gases that covered everything.
This level had probably housed senior executives, if these people followed anything like the practices on her Earth. Those in power seemed to think they needed to be higher up than anyone else and have a better view.
The central area was an open space filled with desks. Probably people that supported the movers and shakers in some way. The latter were probably in the offices along the perimeter of the building, with the most powerful having corner offices.
There were some bodies here, but not as many as one might expect on a workday. Whatever had happened to them, it had come at night, or it had taken time. Not too long, though. Otherwise, there’d have been no one here at all.
“What do you think happened,” she asked Ray as she headed for the largest of the corner offices.
“I’ve been running possibilities through my mind. It’s hard to speculate on something this crazy.”
She opened the door and looked into a spacious and luxurious office. One that Clayton Rogers would’ve been proud to occupy.
“Well, we’re going to have to speculate on what happened here, impossible or not,” she said. “After all, we just found out we can travel across the universe via quantum tunnels.”
“Point.”
The office contained bodies bunched together on a couch, two larger forms with a smaller one between them. This was the first child they’d found and it made her heart ache.
Ray moved to the spacious desk while she stepped closer to the dead. “Since we’re talking the impossible, I suppose that a planet that suddenly lost its sun might die this quickly. I’d have to run some numbers, but just look at how quickly temperatures at home fall overnight.
“Without any solar radiation, that trend would keep on going as heat radiated into space. Faster, really, since the heat on the other side of the planet wouldn’t be there to help smooth things out. The US would be like the Arctic in a matter of days at most. Perhaps even quicker.”
She nodded, knowing that he couldn’t see her. “That would jibe with the cold weather clothing. Whatever it was didn’t happen all at once. These people are inside a building that presumably had power, yet dressed in as many layers as possible.”
Like the rest of the bodies they’d found, these three were dressed for extreme cold, but not with dedicated gear. Just whatever they could put on in layers.
The two larger forms turned out to be a man and a woman. The child was a girl based on her braided hair and bright hair clips, perhaps ten. Definitely prepubescent. She had something in her lap.
Jess brushed the snow off the girl’s lap and found a small black cat curled up there. That made her choke a little more. She loved cats.
She couldn’t cry now. She had no way to wipe her eyes.
A search found ID on the man and there was a purse beside the woman. They had the same last name and address in Youngstown. This was a family.
“There’s a fairly advanced looking computer over here,” Ray said. “It might only be a terminal, but there’s a possibility I can get something from it.”
“Take it with us, then. I’ve got a family over here. I think we should take them with us as a unit. They died together, so we should keep them that way.”
A search of the short table beside the bodies found a pill bottle. They’d probably taken a lethal dose of something before the intense cold froze them. She also found a pet carrier on the floor.
“We’re going to need to be very careful moving them,” she said as she turned to face Ray. “They’re completely frozen and I don’t want to break parts of them off.”
“That’s gruesome. I’ve got the computer and monitor. Or what I suspect is the monitor. It’s a strip that sat on the desk at about the right place. Maybe a projector of some kind.”
“Let’s get it out to the lifter, then. I’ll send someone back to get the bodies.”
She was able to lift the girl’s hands just enough to pull the cat free. The poor thing was just as stiff as one would expect, but small enough that Jess could carry it easily. It took a little work to angle the small body so that it went into the carrier, but she managed it.
The two of them retreated to the roof. She tagged some of the other team members to secure the three bodies. They’d put them in the cargo area in back of the lifter. That way they could stay in vacuum until the medical team collected them.
Half an hour later, they were ready to go. They’d barely made a dent in the exploration, and definitely had more questions than answers. Doctor Crocket was going to go nuts.
She filled McCarthy in as he took them up. He looked at her and shook his head when she’d finished. “That’s just nuts. Of course, at this point, it’s getting to be a whole new level of crazy for everything.
“I spoke with Harry while you were in there. He’s secured the base in France. They locked down the gates so that his asshole brother couldn’t come back unexpectedly, but they have someone snooping around. He can’t head for New Zealand until they take care of them, one way or the other.”
Jess sighed. “We have so many things we have to do. I’m not sure we can handle this all by ourselves. We need more people. People that we can trust.”
“You need to set up a recruiter on Earth. One that can quietly find people with useful skills. With the base in France, we can get them to where we need them. Of course, if we could find a portable gate that we could set up in the US, it would be better.”
“Add it to the list. Until then, I suppose we need to formalize an agreement with Cabot and her people. I’m still not sure I trust them yet, though.”
“Having backup plans are good,” he assured her, “but you have to work with the tools at hand. From what I hear, she might be able to shed some light on this stuff. Surely that’s worth having a discussion over terms.”
Jess couldn’t argue with that kind of logic. “I’ll clean up and make the trip to Earth to see them.”
The lifter made it back into orbit and McCarthy landed it outside the base entrance next to the other lifter they’d brought from Liberty Station.
Freedom Express had ships inside, but they didn’t know how to fly them yet and there was no easy way to get them out. The gates they used led everywhere imaginable, but not to the surface of the extinct comet.
Jess left the team to handle the work of unloading everything and made her way inside. She stripped off her suit once the
pressure and temperature came up.
She’d take the cat down to the lab and leave it with the team there to examine. Then she’d clean up and go have a long talk with Brenda Cabot.
That plan lasted right up until she reached for the pet carrier and saw a pair of green eyes examining her from inside.
Chapter Five
Clayton waited patiently for the scouts Commander Krueger had left outside to report. Their tactical radios gave the special operations team a distinct advantage over the more primitive folk that were coming up the hill. As did the video feed from the small drone that the Americans had brought with them.
Commander Krueger and he watched the feed from it over the operator’s shoulder. The slow-moving craft was almost coasting over the hill and had a great view of the string of men climbing a disused and rocky path toward the summit.
Ulysses—the CIA agent—sat glaring at them from a handy shelf of rock. The Navy officer had cut him out of the command loop now that they were no longer on Earth and he wasn’t happy about it. He’d also objected to him accepting their parole.
Clayton knew the type of man Ulysses was. He’d dealt with far too many like him over the years. The bastard would cause him trouble at every turn.
With a sigh, he pushed the toad from his thoughts and focused on the hand-held monitor. “What do you suppose they’re going to do, Commander?”
The officer shrugged. “Probably look around the general area. The elevation is good for that. They’re not going to find the cave, based on the route they picked, so that probably wasn’t their destination in the first place.”
The men on the hill made their way up to the clearing Clayton and the rest had visited yesterday. The drone was too far away to capture their facial expressions, but based on how far away they stayed from the altar, it wasn’t their objective either.
That said something good about their character, he supposed. The human bones scattered around the slab of stone indicated the owners had some bloodthirsty habits.
The primitive men ended up going to the rough platform the Special Forces soldiers had found. They either wanted a look at the dead alien city in the distance or something between it and the hill.
“Bring the drone in for a pass with the engine off,” Krueger said to the operator.
“Aye, sir.”
The officer glanced at Clayton. “The prop is quiet, but without it the thing is almost undetectable on a close pass. Anyone seeing it will think it’s a bird soaring by.”
“That assumes there are birds on this world.”
“Good point,” Krueger said approvingly. “One that I’ve already verified, but still good thinking.”
The operator took the drone around and then dove in from the side, capturing the men and the area around them as he soared past. A few people looked over at the drone, but didn’t seem to pay it any undue attention.
Once the drone was safely back up and away, Krueger had the operator extract the video and pass it on to a second hand-held wielded by Gunnery Sergeant Danvers.
The man found a good view of the people on the platform and paused the video. “Those are uniforms, but not ones I recognize,” the Marine said. “I suppose there are some similarities to what was used around the time of the Revolutionary War, but I think that’s more a factor of manufacturing methods than design.
“I’m more interested in their weapons, honestly. They share a lot of similarity with muskets of around the same period, too. I’m not a black powder man, but they don’t look like repeaters to me.”
“Let me see,” Mick Bird said. “I have some friends that are into historical reenactment.”
Clayton raised an eyebrow. “New Zealand seems to be quite a stretch for Revolutionary War reenactors.”
The young man grinned. “You’d be surprised how many people outside the US have interests in the time period. I’m not one of them, mind you, but I enjoyed shooting the guns. Lots of smoke and a big kick.”
The New Zealander examined the image closely. “I hate to disagree with you, Gunnery Sergeant, but that is indeed a uniform from the American Revolutionary War. At least I’m pretty sure it is.
“One of the State Militias, I think. Couldn’t tell you which one, though. And those long guns are definitely of a similar make to the ones I fired.”
Krueger frowned. “How can that possibly be? You said the war between the aliens and the humans with bases happened a thousand years ago. The Europeans hadn’t even found the New World back then.”
Clayton snorted. “I’ve stopped asking how anything is possible. I’ve discovered that I’ll probably never find out the answer. All we can do is take in the facts and make educated guesses. I’d say that at least one quantum tunnel exists in the old United States and these people’s ancestors came through a few hundred years ago.”
“I suppose that’s as good a theory as any,” the officer admitted. “Take the drone over the camp. I want to see this army. Make the pass high enough to keep the drone looking like a bird.”
The drone captured the camp in enough detail to see the layout. There were a lot of tents and campfires.
“It looks as if there are a few thousand men,” Krueger said after a long look. “The layout isn’t as regimented as I’d have expected.”
Something caught Clayton’s attention. “There is something at the center of the camp. I caught a bit of the light.”
The gunnery sergeant backed up the video. There was a large tent in the center of the camp and someone was standing outside it. They seemed to be watching the drone through what looked like a long glass. One that briefly flashed in the morning sunlight when the angle was perfect.
“Oh, shit,” Krueger muttered. “They’ve spotted the drone.”
Gunnery Sergeant Danvers shrugged. “That probably doesn’t matter, sir. It’s not as if they know where we are. They might not even recognize what the drone means, even after seeing it.”
Clayton shook his head. “The Asharim might have fallen, but these people still have to have some familiarity with high-technology items. Enough to know the drone is new.”
Honestly, the fact someone had seen the drone mattered less to him than the person who’d spotted it. The figure below was a woman, based on her generous cleavage, but the clothing was out of step from what he thought he knew about the revolutionary setting.
The image was too distant to make out her features in detail, but the woman looked more like she was dressed up for an Errol Flynn movie than the Revolutionary War.
That actually matched more closely with the seaman’s eyeglass she was using and the curved sword strapped onto her hip.
Who the hell were these people?
* * * * *
Harry watched the newcomers from his perch high on the hill over the French base. The intruders had parked their vehicle almost a mile away from the remote site and walked in on foot. Sandra had kept watch on them every step of the way via a micro-drone.
They didn’t look like terrorists, but he knew looks could be deceiving. He wasn’t going to take any chances.
He suspected they were associated with Brenda Cabot. She was one of the few people that knew he was back on Earth. He hadn’t made it easy for her to keep tabs on him, but she was a former FBI agent. That probably meant she had mad skills when it came to tracking people.
These people were probably French members of her secret organization. It had existed for a thousand years and probably stretched around the globe. He’d be astonished if they didn’t have people literally everywhere.
Unbeknownst to their watchers, Rex had taken his team around to keep a close eye on them. The scout had mad skills of his own. He and his people were less than a hundred feet away from the concealed men.
A second team had already secured their vehicle. As soon as Rex had them in custody, they’d bring the vehicle closer. Once again, he didn’t want to chance anyone finding them with all these dead bodies. That might cause some indelicate questions.
; “Rex,” he said over the encrypted channel. “Are you in position?”
Two soft clicks indicated they were in position.
“You are go to proceed,” Harry continued. “Remember, take them all alive. We don’t want to kill any of our potential allies.”
Seconds later, Rex and his men seemingly popped up out of the ground near the intruders with their weapons in their faces. Wisely, the invaders raised their hands. The scout team quickly secured and searched them for weapons.
“Hostiles secure,” Rex said. “We’re on our way back in. By the way, these people aren’t terrorists. They actually bathe.”
Harry laughed. “Copy that. Get them and the car up here as quickly as you can. Sandra, does the area look secure now?”
“None of my people see any signs of backup,” the sniper said. “We’ll keep our eyes open, but I think these are our only visitors.”
It took Rex half an hour to march his prisoners up to the secret base. As a precaution, he put bags over their heads to keep them from seeing precise details of the base entrance. The builders had hidden the damned thing fiendishly well and he didn’t want to lose that advantage.
Harry had selected an empty room on the third level to interrogate them. It had once been a storage room, he suspected.
Rex and the scouts herded the prisoners into the room and closed the door behind them. Two men stood behind each prisoner, holding an arm. Rex pulled their hoods off.
His French was crappy, but Harry had enough vocabulary to get the point across. “Who are you?”
One of the men, a tall thin fellow with a mustache, cleared his throat and spoke in decent English with a pronounced French accent. “Please do not harm us. We are associates of Brenda Cabot. She asked us to make contact with you.”
That was about what he’d expected, but Harry needed to be sure. “Do you have any proof?”
The man looked at his companions and shrugged. “I’m not precisely certain what form of proof you would accept.”
Harry made a mental note to work out a series of code phrases with the former FBI agent. He should’ve done that right up front.
