Leo stared at his cellphone for a long moment. He didn’t care who had pulled the trigger, not really; they were just a symptom. The cause were those damn Roswell Grey aliens. They had started this mess; they had caused the chaos and the panic. It was their fault. Their fault, and they had to pay.
“Goddamnit!” Leo screamed. He turned, swore, and punched the wall. Then for good measure, he threw his cellphone against the wall and kicked it once it smashed against the concrete floor. He grimaced and looked at his hand; his knuckles were scraped, but there was no serious damage. He’d gotten away with that blinding moment of fury.
“Leo, what the hell, man?” Don jogged over, his face a mask of concern.
“My mom and dad are dead,” Leo told him. “Someone started a firefight in the grocery store.”
Don swore. “I am so sorry.” He put a comforting hand on Leo’s shoulder. “You going to be okay?”
“Yeah, of course.” Leo laughed harshly. “Is it wrong that I wish we were heading back to New York? I really feel like kicking some alien ass right now.”
“We’ll get our shot,” Don promised.
Leo nodded. He couldn’t think about this right now; he had to focus on the mission. There was nothing he could do for his parents. With a start, he realized that he was now alone in the world. His mom and dad had been his only family, aside from the family he had in the marine core, his brothers in the unit and beyond.
It was wrong, and it was reckless, but somehow he didn’t mind the fact that this could be a suicide mission anymore. There was no one left who would miss him; he was a perfect candidate to send. Don wasn’t. He had a mother and a younger brother, and Leo wished he could keep him safe. He was his best friend, but nowhere was safe now, not even areas that weren’t under active attack by the aliens.
They were all in danger no matter what. This mission gave them a slim hope of ending the threat. That was worth pursuing, no matter the cost.
Chapter Six
Night had just started to fall the day before when the robot probe had disappeared in a flash of light. It was less than twenty hours later that Leo’s squad arrived at the makeshift camp by the shrine. Leo stood with Don at his side, along with Jakeman and O’Flynn, the other two remaining members of his tactical squad. They had been shown footage of the robot probe’s disappearance, so they knew what to expect.
Now they were just waiting for the all clear to depart. It was somewhat bizarrely comforting that even in the chaos of an alien invasion, the military was still very much hurry up and wait. Leo raised an eyebrow as the resident scientist berated three of the military members of his escort.
“That’s Doctor Julian Braden,” one of the gunnery sergeants whispered. “Apparently he’s legendary around Area 51 for being difficult. Ran off all his research partners until no one would work with him.”
“I really can’t imagine why,” Don muttered to Leo.
A few more minutes passed, and Leo came to the conclusion that Julian Braden must either be brilliant or he had some powerful friends, given his rather abrasive personality. The man in question was currently scowling and tapping away on a tablet furiously.
He had no idea what Doctor Braden was doing; from what he could gather, it wasn’t as if there were any adjustments that could be made. He might just be a dumb marine staff sergeant, but it seemed fairly simple to him. They stood on the platform, someone touched the pedestal, the beams of light shot up, and they either died or hopefully were transported somewhere else. There was nothing anyone could do to control it. How could they, given they didn’t understand it? Although he was sure it wasn’t magical, as had been suggested in the book they’d been told about.
Leo certainly didn’t believe in magic; he followed the principle that any suitably advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic. The aliens had advanced technology, and he wasn’t so naive as to believe they were the only other intelligent life out there. Perhaps this ‘Shrine of Iqmir’ was something left by another advanced race, or maybe even the Roswell Grey aliens themselves.
Either way, the Roswell aliens vastly outmatched them technologically. They were desperate, they needed an edge; that was why they were here and not battling the suited ground troops. The marine special forces were among the mostly highly trained soldiers in the world. Leo didn’t think it was that egotistical to realize that you used your best card for the strike that would make the difference.
There were fourteen men in the unit. Twelve now, thanks to the deaths of Corporals Hellen and Demming. Four men per tactical squad now, down from the original five, and four as the headquarters element. Usually Captain Decker and the senior sergeants would stay at the frontline base while the tactical squads deployed. Given that they were going to a different world, though, the whole unit was going. The plan was they would set up a base camp on the other side. The tactical squads would then deploy from there, exploring whatever world they arrived on.
The platform was roughly the size of a large pallet, eight feet by ten feet; with their packs and all their gear, it would be a tight squeeze. They certainly wouldn’t all be able to make contact with the pedestal, although with how the beam of light had shot up through the whole platform, Leo rather thought that contact was unnecessary; that was merely the activation, and whatever was on the platform was beamed away.
No, if they were taken somewhere else, hopefully it would be directly to another platform. They could then repeat the feat, return, and make a report. He had a sense it was not going to be that easy. It never was.
“Fall in,” Captain Decker ordered.
The unit stepped up onto the platform. Leo shifted around, adjusting his bulky pack as they tried to all squeeze on. No one wanted to see what would happen if anything overhung the edge of the platform; he had a sick feeling that it wouldn’t be good. If it was a pack, they would just lose the gear, which was easily recoverable. If it was a limb, then that was something not so easily fixed.
“Everyone ready?” Captain Decker checked. “Doctor Braden?”
Decker was the one who would touch the pedestal and activate whatever the robot probe had done earlier. The other men who were next to the pedestal had left as much room as they could between them and it, though not so much that it deprived those close to the edge of the platform of space. They were all nervous. Leo tightened his grip on his assault rifle, aware that they could land in a hot zone. They weren’t trained for this; no one was trained for this.
“General?” Julian spoke into the radio. It would be General Sampson who would give the go order. “I would like to repeat that I think I should go with them. They might need help identifying or transporting what they find.”
“Not this time, Doctor Braden. Not this time, as we have already discussed,” General Sampson said firmly, over the crackling radio. “Tell Captain Decker and his men Godspeed.”
“Yes, yes, go ahead, Captain. You have a go,” Julian told Decker distractedly, his attention more on the tablet computer in front of him than on the unit of twelve men who might be about to die.
Leo heard a few muttered prayers from his comrades. He himself remained silent; he had never managed to have that level of faith, but in some respects he envied the comfort it brought them.
Captain Decker touched the pedestal. Leo was expecting a blinding flash of light, and his training told him to close his eyes to preserve his vision, but the fear of the unknown kept his eyes open. Rather than the beams of light they had seen on the camera feed, a golden mist came from the pedestal. It swirled around until it covered the entire platform.
Then there was the expected flash.
Leo felt like he was tossed around, like really bad airplane turbulence. The next thing he knew, his feet hit solid ground—hard. He stumbled and fell face down into the dirt. Stunned, hardly able to believe he was still alive, Leo sprung to his feet and sucked in a deep breath.
He spun, tracking his weapon around. There were no targets—that was good. There was no sign of
any of his comrades—that was bad. However, he could breathe. The air tasted good; it tasted like pine from the trees he was surrounded by. He’d landed in the middle of a forest. Not exactly his first guess for what an alien planet was going to look like.
Leo stood, listening, straining his ears for the slightest sound. He could hear the wind whistling through the trees, shaking the leaves. He could hear birds chirping in the distance and the sound of nearby running water. However, he couldn’t hear the sounds of any man-made noise. That didn’t necessarily mean his comrades were far; they would likely be silent themselves, listening for hostiles as he was.
He couldn’t rule out the possibility that he was still on Earth, just transported elsewhere. An Earth-like atmosphere, a forest…it didn’t seem very alien. There were some remote forests, far from civilization, and even with the chaos of the alien invasion, that didn’t mean he would hear planes.
Leo grabbed his tactical radio. “This is Alpha One Actual, does anyone copy?” The radio hissed with nothing but static.
Alert for the slightest hint of another human presence, Leo picked a direction and started walking. Eventually he would have to hit something that would give him a clue as to the local geography; hopefully it would be a sign of habitation. Every ten minutes, he tried the radio again, but he never got more than static.
After an hour, he turned it off; the radio only had eighteen hours of battery life, if they were lucky, and he needed to preserve that. They had a protocol for this; he would switch the radio on at preset times and try again to hail someone, repeating this until the radio eventually died.
About ten minutes later, Leo heard the first sound since arrival that did not belong in the forest. It was the sound of hooves falling, which could just be a wild horse, deer, or similar such animal. However, there was a metallic element, plus the musical clinking of reins. Whatever the animal was, it was being ridden.
He dashed forward, up a slight embankment, where the trees thinned out, showing a path cut within the forest. Leo blinked, unable to believe his eyes. The animal was a horse, a normal-looking black stallion. However, it was the rider that was the surprise. It was a man, a man in full silver armor, complete with sword, like a knight of old. His helmet was off, perhaps in one of the bulging saddlebags. He had blond hair and blue eyes and was definitely human.
It was the human aspect that was throwing Leo, even more than the atmosphere had. He hadn’t seen anything yet that he would have thought was alien.
Taking a chance, Leo stepped out onto the path, a hundred yards in front of the horse. The rider immediately pulled on the reins to halt the horse.
“Hello,” Leo started. He raised one of his hands in what he hoped was a pacifying gesture.
The man likely wouldn’t understand English; this was not a movie. But they were here to make friends, not enemies. It wouldn’t be a good start to get into a fight with the first person he met due to a misunderstanding or poor communication. Open hands seemed like a universal gesture of peaceful intent.
“Greetings, friend. I am Knight Mathis. Well met.” Mathis, the rider, inclined his head in respect. “How can I help you this fine day?”
Leo’s jaw dropped. “Staff Sergeant Leon Frasier, US Marines.”
“Where do you hail from, friend, and where is it you are heading?” Mathis asked.
Leo’s eyes tracked Mathis’s gauntlet as his hand came to rest on the hilt of his sword. The knight’s words were friendly, but his eyes were wary, as well they should have been. Leo would have been far more disturbed if there had been no suspicion leveled at a stranger; they certainly wouldn’t have welcomed new arrivals so easily on Earth.
For all that, Mathis was human, the surroundings could have been a number of places on Earth and the fact that Mathis spoke English; Leo was fairly certain he had been transported somewhere else. Mathis’s armor, the way he spoke…outside of the reenactment circuit, that wouldn’t be found on Earth. Given the alien invasion, any weekend knights wouldn’t be indulging their hobby at the moment.
As bizarre as it was, he really did think he was on an alien world. It was more than likely that it had something to do with the transport platform that linked the two worlds. How exactly that was possible was beyond Leo’s paygrade, but he was going to roll with it. A common language and ancestry would make things so much easier when it came to pursuing an alliance. They were due a break. A sudden alien invasion was like coming up snake eyes, so it was good that their luck wasn’t continuing on that negative streak.
“I’m from Earth. We’ve just been invaded by an alien force, who have much more advanced weaponry. I’m searching for anything that can help defend my people,” Leo told him honestly.
Mathis frowned. “Ah, a fellow warrior, one from a faraway land. That is serious indeed, friend. I am in the service of Prince Edmund, of the Kaslea kingdom. I am unsure what assistance he could offer, especially at this difficult time, but I can present you to the court. My prince is kind; he will hear your plea.”
“Thank you,” Leo said, smiling.
Mathis dismounted and grabbed the reins, leading the horse forward. “It is time to rest the horse anyway. I will walk with you.”
They started walking further down the path. Leo kept step with Mathis, somewhat surprised by how fast a pace he set. He would have thought all that armor would have slowed him down, but he walked like he was wearing just normal clothes. Perhaps the armor wasn’t as heavy as it looked; it wasn’t as if Leo had ever had cause to try on armor of old, and as a marine he was used to fast marches carrying full packs.
The silence stretched on for about five minutes before Leo felt compelled to say something. This wasn’t his forte; he was used to kicking down doors and neutralizing threats. A blunt instrument of force, not a delicate diplomatic instrument of words. However, out of his element or not, he’d known what he was potentially getting into when he’d stepped on that platform.
He would do whatever it took to get what they needed and then get home. The first priority, though, was finding the rest of his unit. He needed his team; they weren’t lone wolves, and weren’t trained as such. He didn’t want to imagine having to do this without them.
“Have you seen any others like me? Dressed like this?” Leo gestured at his distinctive camouflage fatigues, his tactical vest, and perhaps most importantly, the assault rifle. If he had fallen back into an alien world where knights rode on horses, guns were probably not as common here as they were back home, if they had them at all.
That raised the uncomfortable issue that wherever he had landed wouldn’t have anything that would help defend Earth. However, he couldn’t believe that; he had to believe that there would be something, because the platform had led here. The transport was technology far beyond what Earth understood. That meant there had to be something here of equal technological development to that. At the very least, there had to be a return platform; he couldn’t believe that it was just a one-way trip. He had to have hope.
“No, I have not,” Mathis replied. “You were traveling as a group?”
“We left together,” Leo confirmed, unsure of precisely how much to reveal.
He might have been the leader of his tactical squad, but when it came to the big decisions, that was down to Captain Decker, or one of the senior sergeants. Would Mathis be so friendly if he told him that he’d come from another world? It would certainly mean that Mathis, and anyone else, would know they had no stake in Leo’s problems. Whereas if they believed he was just from another kingdom, well, trouble had a habit of spreading. If they had been attacked, what was to stop their attackers from then turning on the kingdom of Kaslea, or any of the other kingdoms in this world?
“We’re a unit, we usually fight as one.” Leo tried to explain it in a way that would be non-threatening but understandable. “A team of twelve men.” Mathis eyebrow raised. “We mean you no harm,” Leo added hastily. “That’s just the smallest special forces unit my…kingdom sends out. It’s usually fo
urteen, but we lost two men before we left.”
Mathis bowed his head deeply in respect for a brief moment, regarding the two fallen warriors. “How unusual,” he commented, after the moment passed. “I am an envoy for my prince, and I ride alone. Speed is my ally.”
“I need to find them. They are my comrades, and I am concerned for their safety, as I’m sure they will be for mine,” Leo continued.
Mathis nodded. “The main city of Termont is less than a day’s travel from here; we will make it before nightfall. Perhaps your comrades will have made it there. If not, then don’t despair. There is a sorcerer, deep in the woods to the north; he might be able to help. I have seen him work many miracles.”
Leo bit back his initial response. A sorcerer. Was Mathis joking? Although considering he was walking alongside an honest-to-God knight in armor, having been transported by a flash of light to another world after an alien invasion, a sorcerer was perhaps just par for the course these days. Still, aliens he could believe in; he had always known that they couldn’t be the only intelligent life in the universe. But magic was a step too far.
All magic was just science they didn’t understand, which made this sorcerer worth checking out, for more reasons than just hopefully locating the rest of his unit. The primitive locals might have believed in magic, but perhaps that was just a cover for advanced technology. The sorcerer was more likely to have what they needed than the kingdom of Kaslea. However, Mathis was right; perhaps if his unit had been scattered across the forest, then the main city would likely draw them in. It was logical to head there first, and then, once the unit was reunited, or at least hopefully some of them, they could journey to this sorcerer.
“So is this an envoy trip?” Leo asked after they had traveled another half mile.
“Indeed. I have news of the border villages. It is not good, as I am sure you are aware,” Mathis told him grimly.
Divided (#1 Divided Destiny) Page 6
