The Grand Master

by Bill Stenlake

  Bar gets on top and starts cutting the top of the cages away.

  ‘I won’t tell you again. Stop or we will destroy you.’

  Vee does not stop. She fires the engine and as she does, so the four tanks fire. She flips the switch hoping that the response will be in time. The craft shoots upwards several feet as the shells from the tanks pass through the space they had occupied a fraction of a second earlier.

  ‘Cut a hole in the main roof’ Vee says as she notes the barrels turning upwards in their direction. Bar is already on the case. A swift sweeping motion with the compounder is sufficient to break through.

  ‘Side and drop’ he says as the tanks fire again, helping shoot open the hole he has been cutting.

  ‘Go for it’ he says, knowing he will have to stay outside for a bit.

  Vee steers them out and on up. The helicopters are already closing in on them. She drops down to just above the ground level and weaves her way towards the trees. It is not ideal, but she needs to get Bar inside with her. The helicopters are not holding back, firing wildly where they have seen Vee disappear.

  With Bar safely in, she weaves her way through the trees calculating where she needs to come out of the cover, with the least chance of being hit. Once out, there is no way the humans will keep up with the Air Micro Compounder Engines.

  CHAPTER 101 MARIO & MARIA

  By the time they have joined the highway, the radio is full of news reports coming in from the attack on Logan Airport. Buzz has not waited as long as he was supposed to, before launching his assault. He wasn’t supposed to have attacked the airport as his first target, but there is little doubting that it was Buzz and TZ who have done so. One of the trucks has been captured and two of the guys are still alive. It hasn’t taken them long to spill the beans about who is in charge of the operation.

  Maria pulls into the first rest area available and goes in for a coffee.

  ‘There is no point in us going south. They are going to have roadblocks everywhere. It is not going to help us having a trunk full of weapons, particularly my rifle. They might have guessed what it was that took that helicopter down. I think we are going to have to change our plan. Did you feel it change in you?’

  ‘I feel something, but I am not able to put a handle on it’ Mario replies.

  ‘I need to make a couple of calls. I am sorry, but I think it will be best if I make them on my own. I will go back to the car and make them. I will come back for you my sweet.’ She leans over and kisses him fully on the mouth; long, slow and full of passion. Mario can feel everyone watching them. Maria pulls slowly away and smiles at him, before leaving him to look into his coffee, rather than at all the jealous eyes that are on him. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Maria go over to the car and get in the passenger side. He raises his head a little so that he can watch. The people have stopped watching him, so he is able to watch Maria.

  He guesses by the way her head moves and the times she looks down, that she has made three calls in total. She is on her cell for nearly half an hour. Mario has gone to refill his coffee while he waits. When he sees she is returning, he walks up to the counter and gets a refill for her too. Maria thanks him, giving him a short passionate kiss again. The onlookers from before are gone. Nobody seems to take any notice this time. She takes a long draw of her coffee before telling him what she wants him to hear.

  ‘As you know I am from the Nadahli tribe. They are not very many and in the order of things they are one of the smaller tribes. However they are a tribe who are respected across this great nation of ours. By that I mean the indigenous people’s nation of ours. It has long been an argument, that no man has the right to come to our lands and oust us, then seize the lands for themselves. But we shall leave that on one side for the moment. The Nadahli have a tradition of being true and honest. They have a tradition of being great warriors. They have a tradition of having great chiefs. They have a tradition of knowing things before other tribes. I mean by that that in the old days, it was the Nadahli who forecast when the crops were going to fail. It was the Nadahli who knew when the great rains were going to fall and so be able to lead the tribe to a safe place before the event. It was the Nadahli who saw the coming of the white man and saw him taking our lands. The Nadahli tried to warn the others but respected as we were, they chose not to listen. Even the Nadahli could not escape the white man’s bacteria and illnesses. Many were killed before we grew a resistance to them. Our leaders were killed; our chiefs were killed; even our medicine men were killed. For nearly two hundred years we have had no chiefs. We have had chiefs, but they were not like our old chiefs. They were made chief, but they were not born chief. We have had no standing in our nation for generation upon generation of my people. Only women survived from the line of our chiefs. We lost the respect the other tribes had given us. Partly that was due to the fact they did not heed our warnings, but they will never admit that. We are a proud tribe and I am told my father tried to bring back some of that pride. He was mocked by the elders, but that didn’t stop him from believing. He took my mother away from the tribe back to the place where the tribe had last been strong. There he made love to my mother and nine months later I was born. As soon as everyone saw me they were afraid. They could all see that I was very special. It put fear into them, so much so that I was banished. They are afraid of what they can read in my eyes. They may have banished me, but they knew one day that I would be back. I would come back to the tribe, not only to live with them but to be their chief. Even though I am a woman, this is what they saw in my eyes and it scared them. It may not have scared them enough to kill me because they could not do that, but it scared them because of what I would bring. I know the word was sent out to the other tribes. You would have thought that 200 years would have diluted the effect but it hasn’t. They have already heard enough about what is happening. We have to go back to the Nadahli. Maria is going come and she is bringing Mario with her. That is what scares them all.

  CHAPTER 102 SPIRIT

  The android is easy to track, but also a little bit worrying for Spirit at the same time. It travels for five minutes and then stops. Spirit is unable to see what it is doing when it stops too. It isn’t moving very fast either. The surface isn’t that uneven in the area to slow it down to that degree. He half wonders if it is almost making sure somehow that he is following.

  After just over an hour the android stops and doesn’t move any more for at least another hour. Spirit is quite happy to wait it out, as the darkness still covers the surface of the planet. When it does start to move again, it retraces its steps for about a mile before turning ninety degrees to the left. This time there is no stop starting as the android moves along. Nor is the pace as slow; it has doubled at least. Two hours later the android comes to a stop again and a few minutes later it disappears from the tracking screen. Spirit makes a note of the last known position before moving even further away to await daylight.

  Spirit is not in direct view of the last known position, so as soon as there is enough light he climbs to a level where he is in the line of sight. He zooms in, but there is nothing to see but the solid wall of the side of a hill. He scours the area, but there is nothing else to be seen. That can only mean one thing. The point where the android disappeared is the entrance to the base.

  He lowers his craft close to the ground and takes it to a point as close as he dares, while still keeping it out of sight. That still leaves him with a distance of maybe about two miles between him and the hill. He is tempted to do a fly past and see what it brings out of the woodwork, but decides it is stupid to announce his arrival unnecessarily. He thinks it is unlikely they realise he has trailed the android back here.

  There is nothing that he can cover his craft with, so he leaves it behind the rocks. Carefully he starts to make a circuitous route towards the hill. He tries to keep behind cover all the way, but knows that is not a possibility. He has thought of approaching from the other side, but the hill is too steep on the other three
sides to make that possible. Slowly he makes his way there and when he is fifty to a hundred feet away, he stops behind the last bit of cover that is offered before he gets to the hill.

  There are no tracks on the ground and it is as if the rock has been purposely washed clean. It is almost shiny. He is about to stand up to make the last bit and try to find the entrance to the base, when he is gripped from behind. He tries to move his arms but they are locked tight in something. Before he knows it something is put over his head and at the same instant his weapon is removed from his pocket and clamps are attached to his legs. He can feel them searching the rest of him, before more clamps are attached to him making it impossible to move anything other than his covered head.

  He is then lifted and carried horizontally, he has to assume towards the hill and the entrance. But these ones had not come out of that spot. They must have known he was following. They have fooled him into thinking the hill entrance is the only one.

  He is carried gently for a few minutes. He can feel that he has been taken underground, or into the hillside as the temperature has dropped considerably. He hears the change of sound they are walking on, move from rock to metal. Soon they stop and he is stood upright again. Something clangs shut and the cover on his head is tugged off. The body and leg clamps are left on.

  His first thoughts are that he is back on Luvus, as this place looks identical to it. He is in the control room. The only difference is that this time he is in a cage. There is an android standing out of reach, watching him.

  ‘The Grand Master will be the one to decide what happens to you, Spirit. Yes we do know your name. The Grand Master will not be pleased that you have destroyed Luvus.’

  ‘I know it is a technical point really, but it was you who destroyed Luvus. I assume I was supposed to be destroyed too?’

  ‘We were instructed to do that. It is only because of you coming to Luvus that it had to be destroyed. That is why we say you destroyed it. It is of no matter now, as we have this place. When The Grand Master returns he will be pleased we have you. You will not be able to free The Keeper now. An interesting weapon you have used. We will be handing it to The Grand Master. Maybe he will decide to use it on you in the same way you used it on us.’

  Spirit is almost certain that he has seen a smirk on the android’s face. He is regretting not flying the craft in, but he believes one way or the other the outcome would have been more or less the same. He knows that he should have been disappointed in being captured like this, but he has a funny feeling that this is going to have been the only way that he can get close to The Keeper and The Grand Master.

  CHAPTER 103 THE GRAND MASTER

  He takes one more orbit of Earth. He knows that The Keeper will be hoping that he was going to fly over the area where the farm and the mound are. He is tempted to do so, but decides not to. If he had and the place has been destroyed, he feels that might work against him.

  He had almost got excited on the way here that he was going to have Earth as his base. Since he has arrived and seen the situation, he is less keen on the idea. Earth has so many different factions and it is going to be extremely hard to gain control over all of them, or most of them even.

  ‘I was hoping that this would be my base. I can see that it will not be possible. Take a last look at planet Earth. I very much doubt you or I will ever come back here. You can see how barbaric and basic they are. They are almost too simple in their beings. How easy it is to break up their existence.’

  I, The Keeper refrain from replying. At hearing the words from The Grand Master, I have felt something inside of me reacting. I can feel that I will be back here again. Now is not the time for me. All I can hope for is that the people who matter to me and the places they are at; can resist the chaos that has been caused.

  The Grand Master can see that he is not going to get a reply from The Keeper. He takes that as him being defeated and overwhelmed. He allows another smile to creep onto his face, as he thinks he is well and truly on his path to overall control of the Universe.

  ‘We will have to set course for Lupus on Boristal 7’ he says to the android. He then instructs the other android to escort The Keeper back to the travel pods.

  As he says the words Luvus and Boristal 7, I feel an uplifting in my soul. These are going to be the right places for us to go. I do not know why yet, but I know that it is good. I need something good to happen.

  The journey passes uneventfully. By the time The Grand Master brings all three of his captives out of their travel pods, he is already on the final approach to Luvus. He has already been informed that Luvus has self destructed and that he will have to land at the makeshift launch pad on the planet itself. It is far from ideal, but there is no choice. He needs to be somewhere and his thinking is that at least he knows what is what on Boristal 7. They will have to bore out a new launch pad in the side of the hills. He will be able to use his three captives, oh no, make that four captives. They will have to pay for the trouble this Spirit has caused. The Grand Master does not need to use them. The androids are more than capable of doing the work, but his anger wants the captives to suffer for daring to oppose him on his own soil.

  Maybe even, he should work them to death, as a warning to anyone else who might want to try their luck against him. Now he is home again, he is feeling that he has no need to keep them around anymore. Yes, he is thinking to himself, it will be a fair warning to all if I remove The Keeper and the two Guiding Masters, along with this Spirit whoever or whatever it is.

  ‘That is what I am going to do’ he announces to one and all as he enters the base in the hillside.

  The Grand Master

  Author Bill Stenlake 2013

  The Grand Master Copyright © 2013 William (Bill) Stenlake

  The Grand Master is the second book of The Keeper Trilogy

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form, by any means without the prior consent of the author.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Some places named in the book exist and are real and some do not exist and are not real. The placement of all things geographical is relevant to this story only and as such should be deemed fictional.

  Book Cover Picture: Dreamstime/Clearviewstock

  Other books by Bill Stenlake:

  THE KEEPER

  HOLLOW MILL

  KENAN’S LEGACY

  BILL McINTYRE

  CORNERSTONE

  BRAMLEY THE 9 O’CLOCK GANG

  RANDOLPH