Star Angel: Rising (Star Angel Book 4)

by David G. McDaniel

  Not long ago Heath’s team brought a few, smaller Kel gadgets in from the field. Things they were able to pry loose or pick up and carry. Lots of photos. Some video. The operators’ resident brain, Steve, had made notes. Most of that was being spread out for evaluation, on tables, pics and videos brought up and reviewed on laptops. There was a buzz of conversation. Power was still on in that isolated location. Taps to the rest of the world still live. The Kel had not yet EMPed any major metro areas or brought down any civilian infrastructure. Yet. So far this was making operations like Drake’s that much easier, but he had to expect it would not last. Battles had not been going long. Human forces around the globe either had been or were being dispatched easily. Their ineffective stand would soon be completely over.

  Without warning Drake yawned. Wide, and he let it go, ending it with a fierce stretch.

  He hadn’t slept in days.

  Pete took quiet puffs of his cigar. He blew a ring of smoke from the side of his mouth. “We’re all a little tired, eh?”

  “Yeah.” Drake decided to stand. Nodded to Pete and took a slow walk around the room, pausing now and again to stretch.

  Mentally he did a quick recap.

  The entire life of the Project had been devoted to picking at the corners of the fantastic, working to find the truth. After the discovery of the quantum transport device in the Rockies decades ago, then later a secret society that might somehow be connected—the Esehta Bok, who quite probably had a device (or devices) of their own—the Project had been rolling along like gangbusters, picking at those corners, determined to find the truth.

  Now the corner had pulled free. All at once, throwing everyone back on their asses, and suddenly the entire fabric of their understanding had come flapping clear. Exploded in their faces, was more like it, exposing a chest of horrors that just kept spilling goodies.

  First there was the raid gone bad where they went to see if the girl, Jessica, had acquired one of the alien devices. Simple enough. Quiet neighborhood in Boise. Teen girl who might be hiding something. Then she breaks out in a suit of powered armor with weapons that are definitely not of this Earth, and suddenly shiny little teleportation devices look quaint in comparison. She mowed through town, taking down heavily-armed Bok units—their presence alone stunning; frickin attack helicopters, attack helicopters, right in the American heartland—then stole the Project’s own device and …

  Poof. Gone. Leaving them with nothing. Nothing but a hugely expensive, hugely complicated cover-up.

  And so they regrouped and continued. What else could they do? There was still an operation in play, a plan to nail the Bok and get inside their organization once and for all. The Project was reeling but there was hope, and if the Project could follow through and nail the Bok they might get things back on track. After all, the girl and the armor and the other two devices were gone and she could be dealt with, if and when she returned.

  Of course Drake should’ve seen it coming. At just the wrong moment she showed up, not in a suit of armor but in a party dress, smack in the middle of their operation in Spain. With a boyfriend, an unknown player who, they find out later, turns out to be like frickin real-life Superman. Oh, and then the telekinetic shit. Drake managed to learn the hard way that whatever telekinetic psionics they suspected the Bok might have … well, they did. Lorenzo, their Bok target, force-blasted him—Drake cringed as he recalled that invisible impact that knocked him cold; it was a feeling he never wanted to experience again and one he would never forget—then Lorenzo, lovely Lorenzo, got away.

  And, of course, in keeping with the Project’s amazing good fortune, Jessica and her boyfriend got away too.

  But not without leaving something behind. Ah ha! A clearly alien device, like a tablet, that Drake’s people could not, as yet, figure out. Bobby had it with them, there at the safe house, and Drake hoped they might soon have a breakthrough in the understanding of it, and perhaps in understanding it it might lead to something helpful to the current situation. Either way it was definitely a clue. Their one stroke of good fortune. Maybe Fang would have a bright idea.

  So they had an alien tablet. Then, of course, things really got fun. After all this Drake and his team went to the Bok castle—just one hideout among many, presumably, based on the comments of their single Bok captive—set to investigate, wondering why things were so quiet, plotting an approach when … super boyfriend leaps in from a hundred yards away. Leaps in. And what does he have in his hand?

  One of the devices.

  The Bok’s, they assume, and on talking to mister boyfriend determine this is probably the case. But then, of course, he leaps off to God knows where.

  By then everything was about as interesting as it could get, Drake thought. And by interesting, of course, he meant totally insane. It didn’t get any more mysterious.

  Ha ha. Not so. The best was yet to come.

  An alien invasion.

  The Kel arrived just at that moment, gave the world an ultimatum and prepared to take over. Surrender or else. Drake was called to DC to give his thoughts on the matter, finding for himself that the aliens were probably the ancient Kel mentioned in the lore of the Bok, of which the Project knew little, but there was a definite connection. The fact that Drake knew something was marvel enough. I actually knew a little about our alien invaders before they even came. Only it didn’t really help. After the fallout of failed negotiations with the wonderfully accommodating Kel the world braced for war and Drake was sent back to the field.

  Fine. Let’s pick it up from there and do what we can to turn it around.

  But it got more interesting.

  A battle of super hero and beast, to keep things going. Yes! The yellow-skinned demon thing, yet another twist, dropped off to go to town on the super boyfriend—oh, not to forget, that came after super boyfriend had already wreaked a blazing trail of destruction across a small segment of the Kel ground forces. Helping the people of Earth. Turned out he was a good guy after all. That was all well and good and Drake was even starting to feel a little hope until yellow demon man showed. As it happened the demon was even more ripped than the super boyfriend and ended up mostly kicking his ass. Until, that is, the demon was plastered from above by the oddly unique alien craft. The one that didn’t belong.

  Absently Drake hummed the Sesame Street tune in his head, “One of these things is not like the others”.

  He recaptured his rambling thoughts.

  A different alien craft.

  Yes. The Kel were not alone.

  Then that craft was shot down, even as another, much larger one, also different, appeared on the field of battle and made short work of a few of the Kel starships. Then, as if it couldn’t possibly get any more “interesting”—Drake vowed to stop thinking that—the super boyfriend was, according to eye-witness reports, picked up by the larger craft, which flew off and, near as could be determined, ran from the Kel fleet and popped out of existence somewhere in high orbit.

  Superman got in the spaceship and left.

  Like maybe it was his or something.

  Now this spec ops guy, Pete, shows him pics of a girl being pulled from the downed smaller craft, and it almost certainly confirmed the two unique, more advanced craft were piloted by humans. Was the red-headed girl also a super human like the dark-haired boyfriend? How was Jessica, involved? Was she super-human too? Were they all from the future? None of the Project records on Jessica found anything unusual. Nothing to indicate she was anything other than what she appeared. A completely ordinary teen. Her birth records, life’s activities—everything was clean. She didn’t just suddenly appear one day, a baby in a spaceship, discovered by the Kents and adopted as their own.

  She was from Earth. A regular, normal, teenage girl from Earth with a regular, normal past that had absolutely nothing unusual anywhere in it.

  He wondered how soon that, too, would prove untrue.

  Oh, and of course to wrap it all up there was now the report that, after all that,
after the dust settled, the unstoppable demon had crawled out of its hole, not dead after all, and was on a tear across the countryside.

  Lovely.

  Drake no longer knew what the hell to expect next.

  One thing was for sure. No matter what it was, he would not be surprised.

  CHAPTER 27: SHOWDOWN

  Satori’s head lolled. She could feel which way was down by the way it fell; all else beyond that was a dark, sensory nightmare.

  “What is your name?” came the computer voice again, behind it a real voice. A man’s voice; melodic yet harsh, speaking in the language of ...

  She thought she recognized it.

  Yes. She did recognize it. Kel, like the ones that dragged her from the fighter. What did they …

  They’d dragged her out and …

  Such pain! She hurt so badly. She had no idea how long she’d been there, hanging in that dark room. When did it happen? When did they pull her from …

  Willet!

  Where is he?! He’d left to go get Zac …

  Where am I?

  Why didn’t he come?

  He could save her from this.

  “Give us your name.” A different voice.

  A female voice.

  The muscles of Satori’s neck strained in response, lifting her head, but she failed to hold it, let it bob and roll, chin to her chest where it hung a while longer, then fought it erect once more. In the dark, vision spinning, images multiplying in her bleary view she found the source.

  You. Satori didn’t know her, didn’t recognize any of them, these pale demons, but this one looked a queen. Regal. Someone important.

  The Kel Queen …

  Satori croaked: “Tell me yours.” Her voice was barely audible but she heard the computer pick it up and spit it out in a crisp translation. Her words, in the Kel tongue. Strength faltered and her head fell again. She lost sight of the figures.

  Then her scalp stung and someone had a handful of her hair and was holding her head up, peering into her face.

  It was the queen.

  “I am Cee Ranok,” the she-devil said, face close—so close—breath painfully sweet. “Tremarch of the Kel empire.”

  Ah. It was the Kel Queen.

  She swam in Satori’s vision. Then she released Satori’s hair and her bleary gaze dropped, dark floor spinning beneath her like the abyss. She pinched her eyes shut.

  The queen spoke again and the computer voice prodded: “Now tell me yours.”

  “Satori,” she said at once, and that time her voice was a little more firm, a little louder. “No fancy title.” She’d been through training for this sort of thing, but never had she actually experienced it. Never had she been captured by the enemy. And this …

  This was hardly like any enemy for which she’d prepared.

  She braced for the next round of agony, imagining what novel things they might have for extracting information.

  “You’re not from Earth, Satori. Are you.”

  Did it matter if she said?

  “You’re from the other human world. Correct? Anitra, it is called.”

  Her head jerked up, involuntarily, and it betrayed her.

  Damn!

  Too late.

  But how did they know? How could they know? Did she not erase everything on the Kel fighter?

  What else did they know?

  Were they on their way to her home?

  She tried not to become frantic. That was useless. She watched them make some note or something, cursing herself and vowing to be a closed book from then on no matter what they did.

  She would not betray her world.

  **

  Cee left the room to the sounds of the human shouting. Defiant shouts, driven with fury. An extra volume which, much to Cee’s dismay, she found disturbing. She was glad to be leaving that room. She tired of such forced belligerence.

  Her final instructions to her chief interrogator were to extract everything—not really believing the stubborn red-headed human would give up much. She was tough, this Satori, and Cee worried this might be the new model for the Fetok. After a thousand years the Kel were only just re-learning about their ancient subjects.

  At least she’d not proven to be of superior physical strength.

  “My Queen,” Voltan caught her as she stood outside the closed door. Cee had been daydreaming; stopped moving without realizing, standing alone in the hall as if lost, mind on troubling things.

  “Yes?” She began walking at once, as if having intended the pause.

  Voltan followed with a small entourage, curving through the wide halls of the lower decks of his command dreadnought, the Dasaad.

  “The first wave is complete. Earth’s military has been rendered entirely ineffective. Pockets exist, forces scattered here and there, but for our purposes they are done. It was perhaps not as surgical as we desired, but overall the collateral damage is slight. Our first objective has been achieved.”

  “Good.” Then: “Phase Two?”

  “The civilian population across the globe is responding more or less as expected. We will, soon enough, engage select leaders. At that point, and as a first step, we will begin inserting martial governors at certain key points to direct civilian authorities. I believe we can make a Kel world out of Earth in fairly short order, with a compliant human population. We’ll need to give them a certain degree of authority and perhaps even autonomy, but it will work.”

  The group rounded a sweeping bend and passed out into a large hangar bay. They skirted the edge, staying clear of activity on the broader decks, heading toward the far lifts.

  “There’s something else,” Voltan looked to her as they walked. “A curiosity, perhaps. As you may imagine, there continue to be a flood of independent attempts by the people of Earth to make contact. This world is dense with communications and there have been no shortage of efforts to engage us. Pleas, curses, threats, requests to join, offers of deals, claims—you name it. We’ve ignored these, of course, though we’ve evaluated each.

  “Among the noise, however, something has come up. One group I feel you should know of.

  “They speak directly of the Prophecy.”

  At this Cee, once again, lost a step, and as she looked up into the one good eye of her tall Praetor she was certain she caught a glimmer of satisfaction.

  She composed herself. Adopted an air of indifference. “How can anyone down there know of such things?” It was impossible.

  “So far I don’t have any good guesses. Equally curious, they claim to know of us. The Kel. They claim to have come from one of our worlds in the distant past, at the time of the Great Wars.

  “They say they came here long ago with the Witch.”

  Now Cee clearly stumbled. Nearly stopped; caught herself and made herself keep walking, not wanting to allow any emphasis on this thing she so condemned but having a hard time not doing so. How did any human of Earth know this?!

  “Specifically they say they know the whereabouts of the herald, the one the Witch predicted,” Voltan went on, and Cee saw that it was satisfaction in his gaze. “The one she said would come, the harbinger of the Prophecy, the beginning of the Golden Age. They say the herald is among them.”

  The shock in Cee’s expression must surely be clear. This was blasphemy, plain and clear, yet these particular elements were so buried, these references so deep they should be so completely unknown, even to the heretics …

  It was breathtaking.

  “They say the herald has come?” She hated even to discuss such things, especially in front of others, but …

  Could the Prophecy really be happening?

  Was Kang truly the demon?

  Voltan nodded. “They do.”

  Cee grappled with her expression. Tried to look impassive. “And they know where she is?”

  “They claim to.”

  The small entourage and their two powerful leaders reached a lift and entered. The doors closed and it began to rise.

  V
oltan expounded. “They say the herald has come and that this is the time predicted by the Prophecy. They have requested to speak to us of that legend and of what they know. And—and this may interest you most—their desire to crush those ancient predictions and ensure none of what the Witch foretold comes to pass.”

  “Who is this group?” The words spilled from her.

  “They call themselves the Esehta Bok. A Kel name. The Secret Defenders.”

  Cee barely hesitated. “Arrange to bring them before me.”

  **

  “The Reaver has specs as part of its library files,” Nani spoke firmly, making every point forcefully with Lindin, hammering him with every word. Probably more forcefully than was needed but she was on a roll, had been since they got there, and Bianca found it interesting the way Lindin tried to hold his own in the face of Nani’s unexpected hurricane delivery. Whether that was part of Nani’s strategy or not, the effect was that Lindin was having precious little time to slide in the things he wanted to say. Like what the hell were they thinking, and why did they steal the starship in the first place, and boy were they all in big trouble.

  Bianca smiled in witness of it.

  Nani was awesome.

  “It always has!” Lindin shot back.

  Nani was undeterred. “But now we need them more than ever. And I’m telling you—”

  “Look,” Lindin fought for a toehold, “none of that matters—”

  “It does matter.” Nani was practically leaning into him. Bianca had never seen her like this, this brash, this bold, would never have imagined she could be.

  Something for Nani had definitely flipped. Like a switch or something, from Mild to Audacious.

  Audacious. That was a word she hadn’t heard in a long time.

  “It matters,” Nani made Lindin believe it. Made them all believe it.

  From the hangar they’d gone straight to this room and now there they were, Lindin and his bunch of big-wig cronies versus the starship thieves. Nani made sure they knew full well that Zac would keep them in line and that, in fact, she’d locked the Reaver and no one was doing anything without her. Whether that was true or not Bianca didn’t know, but it was plausible enough.