He looked at her gravely.
Part of Jess wanted to laugh. It was a nervous impulse, she knew, a reaction to the absurdity of such a prospect, but she couldn’t follow through. Not after everything. Not after all the strange things that had happened and all the clues that kept adding up and despite her usual, automatic reactions how could she keep denying the possibility that it might, somehow, actually be true? And as she stood there fighting that horrible feeling, not wanting to be “the one”, not ever wanting to be “the one”, a laugh jumping around in her gut that could just as easily explode into a fit of bawling, she wondered, fearfully, how much any of this was real.
Worried all of it was.
She swallowed. “How can you be sure?”
He relaxed a bit of his solemn regard.
Jess put her focus back on the internal dialog.
Galfar shook his head.
She let out an exasperated gasp.
Galfar stared at her as if he didn’t understand. As if, in truth, her teen sarcasm was lost on him.
She became more insistent.
He just kept looking at her, as if it were the simplest thing.
Of course.
How obvious.
**
Hansel followed Lorenzo across the giant foyer of the old Bok mansion, built atop ancient catacombs right there in the middle of modern Istanbul. Things had settled a bit, as word of the Americans’ efforts and then intentions spread, many probably giving up hope at that point, or simply waiting to see, but there was no doubt things were changing. After time spent waiting in a safe house, discussing things privately, avoiding movement until Lorenzo felt the time was right, they were on their way to the first official gathering of the Bok heads since the apocalypse began.
The heavily tiled, cathedral-ceilinged foyer echoed with their footsteps like an empty tomb. A ridiculously large chandelier caught the sunlight high above, reflecting little prisms throughout the otherwise unlit room. Shards of sunshine and pockets of gloom was all that cavernous space held, and Hansel found himself glad when they reached the far side and entered the long hall down to the dining room.
At the end Lorenzo threw open a large set of double doors and entered.
The dining room beyond was as Hansel remembered, though it had been a while since he’d been to this Bok hideout. He’d spent much of the last several years in Spain, in the service of his employers, meeting with Lorenzo and the others of the New Breed as they passed through, the rest of the time spent with the Old Guard. Many of those New Breed had been killed in the fiasco out at the farm, taken out by the superhuman along with most of Hansel’s commandoes, but there were still enough of the cocky punks around. More than half-a-dozen were in the dining room now, the senior members of their cabal, ranged around the impossibly long table, reclined in high-backed chairs, feet up or out to the side, a few of them standing with drinks in hand, looking out tall, frosted-pane windows at the world outside. Displaying that same, affected, vampire-coven-esque posing Hansel loathed so much, taken from too many pop-culture references and brought to life. It was their chosen “look” for conquering the world.
Collectively they turned to Lorenzo as he marched across and took a seat at the head of the long table.
“Do you know more of what happened to the others?” one of them asked. “How can we deal with this man who’s more powerful than us? And where is he?”
Such an arrogant first question. Odd that that, a minor skirmish which left a few of their number dead, should consume their first point of interest. Not the fact that the world was about to be invaded. Of course the Bok had always been self-important, and to a point Hansel understood it. With what they knew, with their professed history, they had, in a sense—if one were to be purely reasonable about it—earned the right to be somewhat full of themselves.
But these New Breed were intolerable. To sit there as they did, in the midst of this global crisis, and wonder at the threat to their own superiority …
Heaped upon that seemingly natural arrogance were the terrible magicks taught them by Lorenzo; things that shocked even the Old Guard. Hansel thought of those now, as he always did in their presence. Nervous. Much as he hated the New Breed they were, indeed, dangerous. Whatever Lorenzo learned in his travels using the ancient device, off to another place, another dimension, another world … Hansel knew little of the specifics, only that each time Lorenzo returned he did so with more tricks, more ungodly powers—which he then used to train and lead his so-called future rulers of Earth—whatever those powers were Hansel feared them.
Lorenzo and his minions, despite everything, had earned a healthy dose of respect.
Before the Kel invasion, however, the Bok were headed in a risky direction. Either toward the world domination they sought or the final destruction of their thousand-year-old society. One way or the other Lorenzo was hell-bent on change. Hansel now wondered what new twist on that drive this injection of the Kel would bring. Impossibly Lorenzo himself seemed to grow more excited in contemplation of it.
“That freak is of no consequence,” he assured the room. “The loss of our brothers is a tragedy, but we’ve no time to dwell. Time to remember them will come.
“For now we have an opportunity before us. One the likes of which we could never have hoped for.”
CHAPTER 18: DECISION TO HELP
The noise in the streets didn’t sound right. In some ways it was as Zac remembered it. In other ways it sounded too …
Confused.
Not the usual confusion, the chaos of many people with many agendas. Not the bustle of a normal day’s work. Not what he remembered from that short day among the people of Spain, spent with Jessica what seemed so long ago. Something was different; about the cacophony, about the movement of the cars, the voices in the streets, the other sounds that marked the activities of a typical morning. It was an organized confusion before, as he recalled that day in Segovia, the energy and the madness of commerce, of fun and of shopping. But now … Voices, yes; cars moving, yes, only … not in the right proportion, not in the right intensities and, as he got closer, though he didn’t speak any real Spanish, he could tell by the tone of the voices that these were not the kinds of conversations that indicated a normal day.
In response to a few shouts he hurried his pace, heard some crying in a house as he passed the open, barred windows, slowed to a brisk walk so as not to alarm anyone and made his way out onto the first main road. Cars were parked along both sides of the narrow street of whitewashed two- and three-floor buildings, some properly, others as if left abandoned. One was weaving carefully among the others, boxes and luggage strapped to the top, what looked to be a family crammed inside. Zac watched them go, then spotted a few people gathered outside a corner bar. He made his way over.
“Hola,” he said to a group of men on the narrow sidewalk and raised his hand in greeting. They looked at him with slight alarm. He dropped his hand, realizing that, while being friendly, he probably didn’t look all that great. He was bare-c
hested, barefoot, wearing only the pair of tattered dress pants and carrying the shiny, dinged Icon, having been sitting on a mountain for days getting snowed on and attacked by wolves. He really hadn’t bothered to look himself over. He did so now, more closely as he went inside, seeing he should’ve taken a moment to think this through. He was smudged in dirt, even a few big paw prints. What must that look like? His feet were caked in mud. When he left his spot on the mountain he just started walking, meandering down in a half-daze, getting his wits about him as he went, mind working to put together a plan of action; how he would start, where he would go first …
He looked like hell.
Inside the bar was crowded; two people behind the bar itself, one old man and a young one, numerous others crowded around, some seated at tables, one small group at a game table spinning figures and whacking a small ball back and forth, but most of them standing around drinking, looking numb as they watched a handful of small TVs on the walls.
Zac excused himself over toward the bar, noting after working his way around several people that, despite the fact that he was a head taller than most, big, filthy and half naked, no one in fact noticed him right away. And as he realized that he also realized the look the men gave him outside had little to do with his appearance. They were concerned with something else altogether. Deeply concerned, as were the people in here, and as he reached the bar he found himself looking around with more scrutiny.
“Excuse me,” he said to a frizzy-haired girl at the bar and found a spot beside her. He motioned for the closest bartender. It was the older man.
“Can I have a beer?” When the man hesitated Zac clarified: “Cruzcampo.” He held up a finger. Without a comment, a nod or any change in expression the man got a bottle from the cooler, popped the top, got a glass, poured half and put the bottle and the glass on the counter. As he did Zac realized he had no way to pay for the beer, a detail he’d failed to consider but … the man simply went back to watching TV.
Zac picked up the glass and followed his gaze to the screen.
“American?” It was the frizzy-haired girl. Zac turned to her. She was pretty, probably around the same age as the young guy behind the bar, only a little older than Zac himself, and spoke with a thick but understandable accent.
“Yes,” he lied. In the tension of whatever was going on it didn’t seem worth a deeper conversation. It really didn’t matter.
“Boise,” he added, though he did not at first know why. It just felt good to say it. To claim he was from the same place as Jessica. American tourists from Boise, traveling together.
“Do you think we have a chance?” the girl asked.
Zac took a drink of beer, eyes on the closest TV. It took him a moment to grasp the images he’d been looking at. A man was on the screen, in a newsroom somewhere, speaking Spanish and looking grim. Writing scrolled at the side, notes of some kind also in Spanish. An information bar across the bottom scrolled more blurbs, but it was the two in-screen images to the man’s right that caught Zac’s eye.
Images of a war.
Not unlike the one he left back on Anitra. Earth forces, ranged against some foe. It took only a moment to get the sense this was not Earth fighting other Earth forces, and as footage of the battle showed a few more of the obviously more advanced weapons discharging against the Earth units Zac had the sinking feeling something very, very bad was happening.
He set his glass on the bar.
“What’s going on?”
The girl’s expression was blank. “What do you mean?”
He pointed to the TV.
Now she seemed to notice him for the first time. Maybe she came to the conclusion he’d been laying in a ditch somewhere. He obviously had no idea what was happening.
“The invasion has begun,” she said, as if it was impossible to think he couldn’t know.
He asked anyway. “Invasion?”
She looked into his eyes, her own big and brown and filled with fear, searching for anything to cling to; any hope, any strength he might provide.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “The Kel. They’ve begun.”
**
This was a complicated, complex world, uncountable factors at work, and Kang was finding it difficult not to get mired in the mechanics of it all. Altitude, simplicity, these were the things he must maintain but was finding harder and harder to achieve, becoming ever so slowly, as he failed to find a way, just another part of the machinery. It was eating at him. Here he was, a force beyond reckoning, and he stood watching. To thrive he must lead, he must terrorize both ally and enemy alike, as a god, and instead he waited. Standing on the bridge of the mighty Kel dreadnought, always standing, watching like all the rest. By now he felt like little more than one of the consoles. Or a chair.
“Squadrons engaging,” one of the Kel operators informed the crew.
“Switch to recon,” Voltan instructed. “Let’s get a look.”
Kang shifted a little where he stood, several paces from Voltan on the high walkway overlooking the large command center. Kel operators sat at stations all around the bridge, most of them idle, watching as the ground forces continued their assault. Around the world squadrons of fighters were sweeping in on their next target, followed methodically by a handful of transports set to deliver the mechanized units that would overrun the humans.
The main screen lit up with a few new views, overlays of streaming images from reconnaissance craft over initial points of attack. There were several dozen locations where the humans had assembled, nine of those chosen by the Kel for the initial wave. Meanwhile additional squadrons—for the Kel had not come packing enough equipment for any large scale ground attack—began the process of clearing the skies. Command and control sites were being targeted, along with any planes sent foolishly aloft to intercept. Kang watched as a few of those confrontations heated up, the transmitted images showing aerial dogfights commencing between the humans’ winged, jet aircraft and the Kel fighters. Missiles were fired, guns were fired, none even close to the hyper-sonic Kel. The alien craft were able to move with impunity, shooting the others down as fast as they could be targeted. Fireballs of destruction peppered wide stretches of sky, marking the speed at which those engagements ended.
“We have locks on their naval fleets. Several submerged units are beyond our locking range.”
“Very well,” said Voltan. “Eliminate all surface craft.”
Now the dreadnought crew came to life. In a fight between starships Kang could imagine the entire bridge would be buzzing with activity; barked commands, intense action. Overseeing a ground assault, however—and one that was being run mainly by ground commanders elsewhere—left them mostly in the role of observer. With Voltan’s order they were about to engage the humans’ waterborne craft far below, and while there was no challenge in that it nevertheless brought with it a certain degree of activity.
At least the dreadnought was attacking something directly.
Kang watched a smaller screen as two of the Kel landing craft swept in on video, heading to ground as their turrets and support fighters fanned the skies with sharp, electric blasts, knocking down all manner of intercept missiles and other efforts to prevent them. So far the response of the humans was pitiful. On the main view, behind the overlays of increasing activity, the image of the world rotated and slid to the side as the dreadnought maneuvered into position, angling to point directly down. Kang shifted his attention to that view. High in orbit, the world spread out before them, the dreadnought continued its downward movement until it hung a thousand miles above the ocean like a needle, pointed at some invisible point on the water below. That spot was brought into the crosshairs, the bore of the giant warship sighted directly on the doomed target; long, centerline cannon locking on with quiet authority. Kang could almost feel it; positional forces holding the last of the ship’s subtle movement in place.
The mighty warship froze. Focus steady, like the moment before the release of an arrow.
&nbs
p; “First target in line.” The section of water was magnified, a large flat-top ship and its support vessels jumping to view. The main screen was now filled with activity, things to look at. Kang focused on the waterborne human ship far below, surrounded by its escorts. An aircraft carrier, he knew it to be called, and the Americans had more than a few of them.
The dreadnought was about to reduce that number by one.
“Firing.” And the superstructure thrummed; a feeling as if a charge built all the way at the rear and was cast out the front in a rush. A green bolt of energy blasted toward the target, flashing from sight on the wide viewer even as it appeared simultaneously on the magnified image below and ...
Boom. Kang could imagine the sound of the tremendous concussion as the carrier was punched in half. One shot from the main gun, that’s all it took, the entire middle of the carrier gone along with a million tons of seawater, vaporized metal ejecting away in a white-hot fireball in all directions, obscuring the image briefly. But only an instant; polarizing filters refocused where the ship had been—in just enough time to see the pitiful remains of the fore and aft sections, fragments, really, sink beneath a cauldron of boiling foam.
“Next target.” The crosshairs shifted. Barely perceptible from that vantage but down there another ship in the fleet was centered and on target, filling the smaller window of magnified focus.
WHOOM! the pulse punched forward from the rear of the dreadnought.
And that one, a cruiser, was gone entirely.
“Necru and Farak engaging,” came the report. Their other dreadnoughts were beginning a similar campaign of eradication around the globe.
Kang glanced back at one of the smaller screens, watching as a trio of landing craft hit somewhere in the world and dropped ramps in the same instant, ground units flooding out in a rapidly coordinated discharge.
Star Angel: Rising (Star Angel Book 4) Page 18
