“Yes, Sire?”
“Jzarak, I have a plan to take back the fortress. We must move camp to get closer before nightfall. With the help of your men, I will construct a trap to snare both the townsmen and the Orange Witch. Prepare for a difficult fight, probably one not without casualties. By the look of the men you have, I assume they will be fully committed?”
Jzarak responded with a tooth-gapped grin. “Sire, I suspect for most of the men here, that would be the best news they have heard in a long time. Our honour was sullied by a mere girl. To avenge the men we lost would be a pleasure.” He waved his hand around at the camp. “Great One, we have nothing left to lose. My men will not only be committed, they will be victorious or die trying.”
Makthryg nodded, trying not to wince from a fresh jolt of pain. “Good, Jzarak. Make certain if any of your men encounter the girl, she is held captive—and alive—for me. I have plans for her.”
“Yes, Sire. When do we break camp, Sire?”
“As soon as we have eaten and refreshed ourselves, Jzarak. Make haste.” He walked into the cave to rest, all the while watched by Paolo.
~~~
Andreas pulled away from the foliage and crept back to Tomas. He cupped his hands around Tomas’s ear and whispered. “There are too many, Tomas. Let us pull back and wait where we can talk.”
They eased back along their path, slowly to maintain silence, until Andreas thought they had retreated enough. He spoke in a low voice.
“We have to get reinforcements. I saw Makthryg giving orders, and the toothless one gathering the men. They are starting to pack up their camp. He has plans afoot for sure.”
Earlier they had tracked Makthryg and Paolo from the edge of the forest, occasionally venturing into the open to check the tracks, still unsure who else, if anyone, was with them. They pulled back when they heard a loud howl of pain, and looked at each other in alarm.
“Was that Paolo?” Tomas said.
Andreas shook his head. “I don’t know. But it did not sound good. We will stay put for a short time and get some rest. Soon enough they will give themselves away.”
After a short respite, they continued, easily picking up the trail again. Andreas squatted and indicated the ground in front of him. “Someone is hurt.” In the dirt were faint impressions, barely visible in the clear night, but unmistakably one of the impressions showed a foot dragging through the dirt. “Let us hope it is not Paolo, or Sarina, if she is here. At least it makes them easy to follow.”
They kept up the trail, then stopped when they heard hushed voices. Andreas held a finger to his lips and they waited. After some considerable time waiting in silence, they continued, but the trail disappeared into the forest and it was too dark to follow.
“What now, Andreas?” Tomas whispered.
“We rest. No one can move through here without light, not even Paolo. I will take first watch, you take whatever rest you can.”
Tomas nodded and made his way silently to sit against a tree, where he closed his eyes. Andreas peered into the dark for a while, straining for further clues, but saw nothing. He sighed and sat down, resigned to waiting for better light.
Tomas was tapping him on the shoulder. “Were you asleep, my friend?” he whispered.
“Hmm. Sorry, Tomas.”
“It is my watch now. There has been no activity anyway, Andreas. I could not sleep. I am too worried for my friends.”
Andreas put his hand on Tomas’s shoulder and nodded. “I will close my eyes for a moment.”
Several hours must have passed, because the barest glimmer of light had greyed the distant horizon when Tomas shook Andreas awake.
“What is it, Tomas?”
“Movement. Let’s go.”
Andreas, tight-lipped, nodded and followed his friend through the forest. Suddenly Tomas dropped to the floor and motioned Andreas to do the same behind him. They lay flat and Andreas crawled forward alongside. “What do you see?” His voice was barely audible and he shielded his mouth with his hand when he spoke.
“Company. Many men. Watch.” Through the thick forest, they were able to make out a band of men, shoving two slightly smaller figures along with them. The leader appeared to be following a trail and looking for something. Or someone.
Andreas strained to make out the figures. It didn’t look like a girl with Paolo, who by his recognisable form, he could clearly see was in the lead. But who was that with him? The figure was familiar but the face could not be made out in the poor light.
The figure turned towards them and it was obvious. Andreas and Tomas looked at each other in wonder, and Andreas tapped Tomas on the shoulder and motioned back behind him. Tomas nodded and they carefully crept back to where they could talk.
“That was Nathan!” Tomas said, his eyes wide.
Andreas nodded. “Now we have a good idea where that flash came from and who it involved. Though why he has come here, who can fathom? Now we know for sure we have two to rescue. But who were those men?”
“I would say they are the remnants of Makthryg’s disavowed soldiers; those who would not lay down their weapons against us. We need to continue tracking them and wait for Rocco to return.”
They had watched the band of misfits come across Makthryg asleep, and then tracked the entire group back to their camp, where they had joined more men. Now, after lying in wait and watching, Andreas had seen the men packing up, and he sensed urgency in their actions. He whispered to his friend. “We have no choice but to continue to follow. I fear for the safety of the boys, but to attempt any rescue now would be foolish.”
“Worse than foolish, Andreas. It would be certain death. But we have no other choice for now. With luck, Rocco is well on his way back with reinforcements.”
“Then we will need to track both forwards and backwards. We cannot risk Rocco and whoever is with him stumbling into this group, or alerting them to their presence by making too much noise. Rocco has no idea these thugs are in the woods.”
Tomas nodded. “Then we both track this group for a while. I will double-back from time to time and leave markers for Rocco to pick up. You do the same for me. I will find you.”
“Good plan,” Andreas whispered. “Be prepared. I sense Makthryg has something in mind. We may have to act quickly. Now we watch and wait. We will take the time to see if we can understand how many there are and what capabilities they have. Come. Let us find a suitable spot.”
They crept forward with the light touch of men used to spending time in nature.
~ 18 ~
Questions
Inspector Bolton unlocked his office and walked to his desk with his coffee in hand.
He liked mornings. Mornings were good. No big piles of paperwork, and usually no great problems overnight. Chelton was a quiet, middle class town, mostly untroubled by gangs, organised crime, and the seedier side of life found in most other towns.
He sat down and sighed. It had been a stroke of luck, landing this region to see out his career before retiring.
Sergeant Crawford stood in his doorway and knocked on his door with a regular ‘rat-a-tat-tat’.
Bolton groaned. “Yes, come in, Crawford, I can see you are there.”
“Didn’t want to interrupt your coffee, sir, I know how you like it.”
“Well if you didn’t want to interrupt it, you wouldn’t have come in, would you? Now what do you want?” He eyed the sergeant and sipped from his coffee.
“Ah, yes, sir. Ah, we’ve had a couple of reports of strange goings-on.”
Bolton lifted an eyebrow.
“Yes, sir. Very strange. It seems a bus load of kids was travelling around town very late at night. We ’ad reports of men in suits picking up kids from houses. But no-one has reported any kids missing.”
“It’s not so strange, Crawford. They could be an astronomy group or such. Unless we have had complaints or a crime committed, not much we can do is there?” He picked up his cup and twisted it around to see the label: ‘Bean Away’. Goo
d coffee. He set the cup down delicately and waited.
“Yes, sir. But here’s the thing”—Crawford liked to spin his stories out with a bit of drama and Bolton had learned it was better to let him run with it—“We’ve also had reports of screams what came from two separate buildings. Screams what sounded like kids.”
Bolton’s interest level raised a notch. He was sure this was nothing—maybe some late night horror-movie club or something similar—but he didn’t want any complaints from parents that they hadn’t taken such reports seriously. “Which buildings, Crawford?” Sometimes it was hard work getting the facts, but that was why they paid him the big bucks, he reflected.
Crawford looked smug. “You’ll like this, Gov. One of them buildings was in the same area where we picked up that six-year-old girl. And the other building has a Mr K Harrison noted as the contact.”
Bolton permitted himself a smile. Professor Kingsley Harrison. That smug so-and-so. Well he would keep that supposed scientist on his toes, even if he did have friends in high places. A thought jumped into his brain. “Don’t we still have the young girl here?”
“No, sir. Some very ’igh up man came with a Notice-to-Release. All above board it was.”
The Inspector frowned and turned to his computer screen. In moments he was looking at Harrison’s profile smiling at him from some official website. He clicked through to a section called ‘About Professor Harrison’. He scrolled the page and stopped.
“I thought so.” He looked at Crawford. “I thought that little girl looked familiar. Look, Crawford”—he spun the screen around—“Harrison’s her official guardian. This is all adding up to something very fishy if you ask me. I think we should investigate.” He stood to leave, but Crawford waved him back to his seat.
“Sorry, Gov. There’s more to this story. Also reported last night by several people was a loud screeching noise; and some sightings of that enormous bat-thing.”
Bolton’s brow furrowed. “The same one the kids at the school supposedly saw?”
Crawford nodded. “Only this time it weren’t kids what saw it.”
The Inspector tapped the side of his nose. It helped him to think, and he liked to believe it made him look more ... Inspector-like. “Crawford, tell me this. That school that reported the creature before. Was it by any chance the same school those two vandals went to? The boy and girl that Harrison conveniently took from under our noses just as we were about to arrest them?”
Crawford’s eyes widened. “Yes, Inspector. Them’s the ones.”
Bolton winked at Crawford. “Then I think it’s high time we asked some questions of our Professor friend, don’t you?”
Crawford grinned. “Won’t get no argument from me, sir. I’ll drive shall I?”
Inspector Bolton picked up his hat from the desk and opened the drawer for his keys. “No, Crawford, I’ll drive. We’re not on a police chase.”
Not yet, he thought as he placed his hat on his head and patted it down.
~ 19 ~
Conspiracy Meltdown
“This is a public announcement affecting all domestic and international air travel in the US. Please stop where you are and listen.”
The voice from the John F. Kennedy International Airport public address system was firm.
“Effective immediately, all private, charter and commercial air flights are cancelled due to reasons of extreme concern for traveller safety. This announcement is made following mandatory advice from the Federal Aviation Administration. We apologise for the inconvenient and sudden nature of this action and we hope you understand it is not a decision taken lightly. For more information, please contact your local elected representatives, who have been provided a briefing.”
The announcement was repeating. “This is a public announcement affecting all—”
But the voice was drowned out by the pandemonium erupting in almost all locations across the airport.
~~~
The news announcer looked up at the camera and smiled. “Good evening. Brian Goodman, with you at News Time On Three. Today aviation authorities around the world took the unprecedented step of shutting down all non-military flights, causing panic at airports. We have very little information so far, but it seems a spate of near misses and blackouts by pilots returning to manual control from autopilot has caused governments to take this extraordinary decision. James Middleton is at the FAA. James, what can you tell us?”
The picture switched to a shot of a man in a suit standing outside an imposing building. It could have been any government building anywhere in the world. The early evening sun sprawled across the wide stone steps of the building behind him. He had more of a southern drawl than the news anchor.
“Yes, Brian, the FAA have been holding their cards close to their chest all afternoon, but we’re expecting more information at the upcoming press conference.”
“Have they said anything about these so-called blackouts, James?” The screen split to show both men.
“Not yet, Brian. So far, all we have is rumour. We do have Captain Ryan Stanton, a retired commercial pilot, here to explain the procedures that have been used to bring this situation into play.”
The anchor nodded knowingly. “Thank you, James. Captain, what can you tell us—”
Click.
Blanchard switched off the TV in his hospital room, and lay back on the bed exhausted. At least with the creature out of their way, and badly injured, the Professor might now have a chance of restoring the world to order.
But at what cost?
~~~
The late night edition of the Financial Times hit the streets early. With the closure of most stock and trading markets, the news had been easy to report.
Geoff Atkinson, the paper’s Chief Editor, sipped a mineral water in the paper’s now-peaceful conference room. Never before in his long history of reporting financial events had he witnessed this. Not since the crash of ‘87. In fact, if he thought about it, even that crash was nothing like this.
He put his feet up on the chair next to his and looked at the headline on the freshly-printed edition in his hand.
‘The Algorithm Wars: Are The Machines Winning?’
A pragmatic man, he wasn’t normally prone to writing such sensationalist headlines, but then again, normal did not describe this situation.
It was as if all the financial geniuses in the system had gone barking mad. Simultaneously. Unpredictable trades; illogical buys, sells—and the most ridiculous creative analyses. One minute the best companies in the world were the safest thing to have in your investment portfolio, the next minute they were being sold off like penny doughnuts at a school fete.
And as far as his own contacts reported, the computer networks, programmed to take full advantage of any business trends, even the most short term runs, had gone into meltdown.
Eventually the controlling powers—the faceless men behind the scenes, the ones with the real money at stake—had pulled the plug. Just like that.
Now no one had anything to buy or sell.
And nothing for him to report on.
He scratched his head and sipped his water. Good job he wasn’t much of a thinker, more of a ‘reliable plodder’, as his last boss had called him.
Coming up with the headline had been the hardest part.
He flicked the page and scrutinised the words of his reporters. One thing he wouldn’t tolerate at the Financial Times was bad grammar.
~~~
Quentin Tabernacle, the host of ‘The Intelligentsia’ TV panel show, turned to his right. “Alan, surely you have a position on this? Your department cannot be telling us they knew nothing of these plans?”
Alan Jensen shifted uncomfortably. The Secret Intelligence Service, formerly known as Military Intelligence, Section 6, or MI6, had drafted him in to allay public concerns about clandestine experimentation in the expansion of mind powers. “Ah no, Quentin, that’s quite true. We at SIS would be the first to know, and the public can be assured that,
in the advent of a situation as serious as this, we would be authorised to share even classified information. In the interests of public safety of course.” He nodded and gave a paternal smile to the television audience, which to viewers at home, looked more like a self-satisfied superior sneer.
“Oh, come on, Alan, that’s spook-speak and we all know it!” The retort came from David Gaspin, an outspoken conspiracy theorist and former journalist. Jensen looked at the man with contempt. Unfortunately he was often close to the truth, and God knows where he sourced his information. They clearly still had issues at SIS with internal leaks, even after the BritLeaks scandal. But as far as Alan Jensen knew, this time he was way off the mark.
Gaspin continued, leaning around the host to face off his adversary. “Alan, we know the FBI have invested funds in an operation that claims to have discovered the very particle responsible for intelligence. If that is true, could these awful events be due to the use of these particles by terrorist organisations? Don’t you think the public have a right to know? To be able to defend ourselves against such attacks?”
A man in the studio audience wearing a large tin-foil hat leaped to his feet. “I’ve seen them! They’ve been trying to get into my brain too, but I won’t let them! The government is a disgrace, they’ve been working with these aliens in secret locations and messing with our minds for years. Tell us the truth! They’re coming aren’t they? You’re lying about that comet, too, that’s a cover-up, it’s another alien spaceship. They’re com—”
His speech was cut off by a large hand clamped over his mouth and he was escorted away by two large men in suits. The audience laughed.
Alan took full advantage and pressed his point home. “Wild accusations, David. The public know that these are the ravings of lunatics. No, we are certainly not responsible, nor is there any such operation being conducted by the FBI, or indeed, by us.” He nodded again at the audience. “Like many in your audience here, I would rather hear from Dame June Evans and the medical research teams. I think we’ll shortly be hearing about her success in bringing the pharmaceutical companies together to produce a rapid-acting vaccine.”
The Dreamer Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set Vol I - III: A Sci-Fi Parallel Universe Adventure (The Dreamer Chronicles - Science Fiction For Kids And Adults) Page 49
