Star Angel: Awakening (Star Angel Book 1)

by David G. McDaniel

  Wasting no time he simply decked the first then kicked the other, knocking them both skidding onto their backs, no shots fired. Jess could tell Zac showed restraint in his actions. After what she’d seen so far she had no doubt he could punch a guy’s head off. Quite literally.

  Bap! Bap! Bap! Shit! The guys on the wall were shooting. She gasped and lunged behind the dash. Bap! Bap! Bap! muzzles flashed in the night, bullets cutting the air in rapid-fire staccato. More shots and two splanged loudly off the hood of the car. Whap! one hit the windshield with a loud crack and she curled tighter, biting back a scream. No! She was being shot at.

  But then the bullets were redirected, away from the car. Unable to resist she peeked carefully over the dash, through the spider-webbed glass until she could see the top edge of the city wall.

  Zac was up there.

  One tall, insanely strong fighter-looking dude in black shorts, taking on a pair of guards in SWAT uniforms with guns. They fired but he ignored the bullets and, in an instant, both guards were on their backs and Zac stood alone atop the wall. Jess raised her head a little further.

  In addition to being fireproof it seemed he was bulletproof as well.

  From his elevated vantage Zac scanned the area, looking for other signs of trouble. Then he jumped suddenly to the ground. She cringed, thinking he would break his legs from that height, but that was a natural reaction. He landed easily, like some kind of Super Tarzan, and she watched as he went into each guard shack, looking around inside. In both cases he came up short. For a moment he stood outside, in the headlights, thinking, then turned his attention to the gate itself.

  Was there no way to open it? Police, pursuit and all manner of other nightmares gripped her mercilessly, the absence of action compelling her to just stomp the gas and ram it. But that wouldn’t work. The gate was far too massive. The car would never take it down. The car would never even put a dent in it.

  Then Zac walked up to it.

  BANG! the echo resounded through the air as he punched into the metal. She recoiled from the tremendous, unexpected noise. BANG! again he punched, higher, pulling himself up to the central hydraulic bar that ran across the gate, peeling aside edges as he went. She watched in gaping awe, wondering how much more awestruck she could become, mouth falling completely slack as he continued, climbing the thing like it was made of clay. BANG! smash one hand into the metal, make a handhold, peel back the locking edges, reach the other up higher and … BANG! smash another handhold and so on. Scaling until … he reached the beam.

  There he punched through the heavy bar and it fell away, the whole thing making terrific, metallic clangs. Like a gigantic, badly-tuned church bell, gonging madly. She was sure it could be heard across the entire city—probably all the way out on the field of battle. The sound was titanic. As the traumatically ruined gate doors swung open with a shuddering groan Zac leapt away, clearing them as they sagged mightily from their hinges and held.

  Plenty of room to drive the car through.

  Jessica’s eyes had grown so wide she could feel them straining. Like they might actually burst.

  Suddenly Zac was getting back in the car and she snapped from her trance. He closed the door and looked at her, his own eyes a little wide—apparently feeling the same sense of amazement, even though he was the one who just knocked down the giant metal gate with his bare hands.

  For a long moment they simply sat there staring at each other.

  Then he spoke.

  “Clearly there’s more to me that needs to be figured out.”

  She continued staring at him, dumbfounded. Then turned her attention back to the wheel, put the car in gear and agreed quietly.

  “Clearly.”

  * *

  Captain Willet checked the last Dominion soldier, confirming his death. None of his own men had been lost in the brief firefight. One was wounded, but not badly, and already on his way to the extraction point under his own power. They would continue on.

  Willet got back to the matter at hand.

  “Finish that feed. What’ve you got?”

  His tech finished the scan of the Astake powered armor, uploading the last bits of data.

  “Images, sir. Looks like these suits were engaged by two people.”

  “People?” Willet came closer, looking at the screen. On it were a man and a girl. The girl was dressed in white, the man just as oddly. In the video the girl looked terrified, then went over to hide behind a car door while the man remained standing in the street, facing down the armor.

  Willet glanced up. At the spot where the video was taken. The car from the images was no longer there. The two must have taken it.

  Then he recognized the man in the video.

  Swallowed.

  It had to be him.

  There was no other explanation.

  “Send this to Commander Satori,” he said. “Now.”

  * *

  In her massive battle tank Satori held on as they raced across the uneven terrain.

  “Commander!” her radioman called up. “Transmission from the recon unit!”

  She lowered herself through the hatch and pulled the cupola closed behind her. Senses shifted to the busy interior of the tank, red battle lighting giving everything an eerie glow. Her crew manned stations, steering wide of the battlefield in order to give her a moment to review the information. Her radioman moved as she descended, giving her access to his screen.

  “It’s from a suit of Astake powered armor,” he reported. “Willet and his team found it on the scene, near the coordinates.”

  Satori ran through the images.

  “This is what the Dominion encountered?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Captain Willet says to pay close attention to the man in the video.”

  Satori looked more closely. A man in the street; a girl hidden behind a car door. Both were dressed … not like anything she’d ever seen.

  “Enhance the man.”

  The radioman did so. Satori studied the image of the face, then asked for more. The resolution was increased.

  It was him.

  Willet was right.

  “My god,” she leaned back. “It’s Horus.”

  CHAPTER 11: INTO THE WILD

  Zac stared straight ahead, peering into the dark distance as Jess raced the car down the barren road. Cold night air whistled through the cracked windshield and she couldn’t stop shaking. Though she imagined the cool wind had only a little to do with it.

  She was scared out of her mind.

  The adrenaline from the shock of their arrival, the fight for survival and the race away from the city … all the things that kept her going until then, kept her mind busy, were gone. Leaving her ample time to contemplate her terror.

  The road continued on from the city gate, straight on with no end in sight, outside the city nothing but wide, open plains. No street lights, no signs, no other roads, no buildings. Looking back the city was truly a walled fortress. An island of civilization. Far ahead in the distance woods began. Hills—their dark shapes could just be made out in the night—but otherwise the road seemed to stretch away to infinity. The only other human construction was what looked to be an elevated monorail, heading into/out of the city miles away across the grassy fields. It stretched into the distance, more or less paralleling the road until it eventually curved away into the hills. Jess glanced at it, then back at the darkness ahead, fighting moment by moment the swelling panic.

  She checked the mirrors for the hundredth time. So far no pursuit. Whether from the distraction of the battle on the other side of the city or other factors she could not yet fathom, no one followed. Not yet, anyway. But she knew it was coming. It had to be.

  Where am I?!

  As if on cue the moon slipped for the first time from behind the heavy clouds.

  Her heart lurched.

  There was no doubt now.

  Up to that point the possibility, however unlikely, however insane, that they might still be on Earth, clung despe
rately to the far recesses of her mind. Remote, but sustaining her. Maybe Zac was a military experiment. Maybe the device just popped them to some other continent, like a top-secret gateway or something. Maybe the city, the samurai robots—maybe all of it was just some super-secret, super-hidden reality. Maybe they were deep in the heart of North Korea. If so then she could eventually find her way home.

  But they weren’t in Korea. And the truth could no longer be questioned: They weren’t on Earth at all. She looked up with growing dread at the large, colorful disk in the sky. Too large. The moon has colors. In fact it seemed to have continents—even sea-like depressions. Like another planet rather than a moon. It was even surrounded by a thin, faint glow; as if blanketed by an atmosphere.

  Definitely not the moon.

  Which meant this was definitely not Earth.

  She tried hard not to cry. Yet her expression must’ve betrayed her. Maybe her lip trembled. Maybe her eyes glistened. Whatever the signs, Zac picked up on them. He reached and laid a hand on her shoulder and she shook her head. Sniffed, but didn’t dare open her mouth lest she start bawling. He stroked her hair, trying to comfort her. Pushed a few strands from her face that were blowing in the wind. They flopped back.

  On they raced. Zac had told her to keep the headlights off. It was dark and hard to see but she kept on, sticking to the road under the pale light of the alien moon.

  * *

  General Lyto Yamoto strode with purpose across the expansive command and control center, the beating heart of the Dominion war machine. Screens on all sides showed schematics or live video of the skirmish taking place outside the city walls, where his forces maintained their defense against the insolent Venatres.

  He found his chief adjutant among the bustle of technicians and military commanders, the man who had summoned him. More than a few spared their attention long enough to acknowledge him with a nod or stiffened posture. Yamoto was not just the highest commander in Osaka, he was, aside from the Shogun himself, the highest military figure in the whole of the Dominion. He reported directly to the Samurai Lord, Shogun Ashikagi Yoshi, who in turn answered only to the high clerics of the Guardian Council. In a sense Yamoto was the most important man in the room.

  “Damas,” he called to his adjutant as he drew near. Damas snapped to at the sound of his voice, spotted his General and closed the gap.

  “Sir,” Damas bowed sharply. “Something to show you.” And he turned and led Yamoto to a nearby screen. Several technicians surrounded a large monitor. “Command received this feed earlier from a city patrol, near the West wall.”

  General Yamoto watched as the technicians ran the recording. On screen the view from one of their Astake patrol units showed a deserted street, two people standing in the center of the image. One was a man, not clearly visible, the other a girl, both dressed in strange clothes. What is this? On video the man signaled the girl to a nearby vehicle and she went, taking cover behind the door. Metrics from the squad leader’s feed scrolled beside the images, information on this or that parameter. Commands were issued to the girl by the Astake armored units, responses came from the man in the street, but he continued to stand defiantly before the powered armor.

  Then, quite suddenly, he leapt, blurring past the squad leader’s screen on the right. The squad leader turned, only in time to see the man slam into one of his other units, stunning the operator. In the same instant the man gripped and lifted the unit …

  “Go back,” Yamoto ordered, blood going to ice.

  The technician rewound the video. Impatiently Yamoto pushed him aside, taking control. Carefully he advanced the footage and paused. Enhanced.

  Horus.

  “When was this taken?” He straightened.

  Damas swallowed. “Command received it an hour ago.” Yamoto knew his adjutant realized this delay would mean punishment. Minimally for the field command responsible, perhaps even for the rest of them. “For now I’ve left those responsible on their posts. I can have them removed.”

  Yamoto was far more concerned with things as they stood, not mistakes that had been made.

  “Where did they go? Who’s the girl?”

  “A gate on the East side was compromised. Reports indicate it was him. As for the girl, we don’t yet know, sir.”

  Yamoto turned. “I must wake the Shogun,” he said. “Gather what resources you can spare and stand by.

  “Horus will soon become our objective.”

  * *

  Jess yawned, a normal human reaction in an otherwise unreal situation. It had nothing to do with boredom. Adrenaline was ebbing. The drone of the steam-powered car lulled her tired senses. They’d been driving nearly an hour, according to her watch; her dainty little watch, still telling Earth time. It was 6:15. Her family would be sitting down to dinner right about now, she thought, though it was the dead of night where she was.

  They’d reached the wooded hills a bit ago and been driving through them, gradually gaining altitude, winding back and forth along the dark road as the plains gave way to increasingly sharp curves.

  “Let’s get off the road,” Zac broke what had become a long stretch of silence. Interrupting, thankfully, the fresh wave of panic hedging in.

  Jess was more than ready to stop.

  “Pull off here?”

  “Yeah.”

  She picked an area with a wide shoulder, slowed and steered the car over to the side.

  “Pull as far as you can into the trees,” he instructed. She nosed the roadster into a gap between the trunks and eased up the hill, saplings crunching beneath its throaty advance. Tall grass came over the hood, potholes and fallen branches creating a bumpy push. After a few dozen yards the trees managed to block the light of the moon and, though her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, she was soon unable to see anything.

  “This is good,” Zac sensed her hesitation. She stopped, put the car in neutral and turned it off.

  “I’m going to cover our tracks.” Without further comment he got out, closed the door and walked toward the rear. Leaving her alone. And for the first time since popping out of existence in the playhouse it was quiet. Deathly so. No motion, no sound. Nothing to see in the dark. Her head buzzed in the sensory void.

  Cautiously she took stock of herself. A few aches had begun to reach her awareness as the endorphin rush continued to fade. No real injuries. Her skirt was ripped, as was her blouse. She was dirty, mortar dust from the collapsed building ground into clothes and skin, strands of hair pulled free of her ponytail and hanging in her face.

  She felt her lap; the little zipper pocket in her skirt. Her phone was still there. Curious, she took it out. Kids were constantly abusing their electronics, usually out of simple neglect, and most survived the daily rigors of dings and drops.

  How about a fall from a thousand feet? she wondered as she examined it. To her mild surprise the phone was intact. No broken pieces. This was supposed to be a tough model. Did it still work? She fingered it and … it lit up! For a heart-wrenching moment her spirits soared, like maybe things actually were normal. She could call home! Hope was dashed in that same instant, however, as the “no signal” bars popped up on the face, an image as alien as the world she’d landed in.

  There was nothing at all for the phone to pick up.

  Saddened by the reality check, she fished out the ear buds and put them in. Thumbed the screen and went to her music. The last song she’d been listening to came on—abrupt, shocking; the same volume as on the bus earlier that day. An old beat, volume grindingly loud, heavy guitar riffs pumping in her ears, so incongruous with everything else in that moment that it actually hooked her in her depleted state and she checked her move to turn it off or even down. It took her away, actually, quite without wanting to be taken away, and she found herself drifting. Just like earlier, riding home from school, mind a million miles away, bouncing along on the bus’s flat bench seat, contemplating the incredible unknown …

  The door opened and she screamed.
>
  Zac was standing there. She yanked the buds from her ears.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I called out.”

  Clumsily she stuffed the phone back into her pocket, earbud wires snagging on the zipper, mortified by her reaction. The echo of her scream played in her mind.

  Like a little girl.

  “What’s that?” he asked, sensing her embarrassment.

  “Oh, um,” she fumbled back in her pocket, pulled out the phone and showed it to him, grateful for the darkness that hid her hot, reddening face. “It plays music.” She held it closer so he could see. Then grew sad, a complete swing of emotions, embarrassment replaced all at once by grief as she said softly: “Let’s you call people. Stuff like that.”

  He nodded as he looked it over. When it appeared he was done she put it away and zipped the pocket.

  He turned back to the situation at hand. “For now we’ll go deeper into the woods,” he stepped away so she could exit the car. “To higher ground.”

  She got out and closed the door. And as she stepped from the car to the soft, grassy ground, the feel of it underfoot snapped her to a different place. Unexpectedly, like a rush of nostalgia and, completely involuntary, she closed her eyes, savoring the sensation beneath her feet. She curled her toes and squished the cool dirt, taking in the smells of nature all around. Her attention drifted to the summer fields of Idaho.

  Delirious.

  Consciously she took a deep, shuddering breath and opened her eyes.

  She was all over the place. Her mind was fading.

  “This way,” Zac began walking up the hill into the dark woods. She followed, fighting the welling sadness.