Despite the fact that he was unarmed and she carried two pistols, she believed his threat.
Major Forest swallowed hard.
"Okay…um…this way," she led him toward a descending stairwell.
"Wait. I thought you said we’d head for the roof and take his ship."
She answered timidly, "If we go down two levels we can cut past the holding chambers and get into one of the cargo tubes. That will take us to an elevator to the roof."
He did not budge. He did not believe her.
She said, "Listen, back in the old days some of the supplies had to get shipped fast to the front. We had transport tubes from the core to a freight elevator to the landing pads on the roof."
Trevor said, "Your supplies from another world. From your home world. Right."
She bit her lip and nodded.
"Tell me, Nina, why is this city so empty? Where are the reinforcements from home?"
"We don’t have time for this, Trevor. We have to get going. Snowe isn’t going to let you live now, he’d never trust you and he sure doesn’t trust me. We don’t have time."
"We’ll make time, soon enough. Okay, go."
Trevor followed the Major down several flights of stairs. They arrived at a wide, lonely corridor. They hid among a pile of crates covered by a tarp as a squad of soldiers marched by.
When clear, he asked, "Did I go from Emperor to wanted man that quick?"
She said, "No, he'll try and keep it quiet. He's probably got a handful of loyal men in here searching for you and everyone else doesn't have a clue. But we don't know which guards are working for him and which aren't, so best to stay out of sight if we can."
One room grabbed his attention, a massive but dormant assembly area. Through an observation window, he spied parts of Skippers—rotor blades, wings—lying about.
"Too big to come through on their own," he said more to himself than her. "So you send through the parts and assemble the bigger equipment over here."
"Yes," she admitted.
He said to her, "I've seen gateways before on my world. The Hivvans had one and that one looked different from the one we destroyed in Binghamton that first year. Yours doesn't look like either of those. Same function, maybe made from different technology?"
"I guess. Look, we have to keep moving," and she coaxed him forward.
The hall ended at a set of rusting metal doors but passages led off to either side, making a ‘T’ intersection. To the left, a corridor leading to darkness. To the right, a small hall lined with electrical cords and plumbing.
While he waited for her to decide direction, Trevor heard voices from the passage to his right where he saw an archway leading into a lit chamber of some kind. He recognized the tone of the voices: guards issuing orders, no doubt with the added emphasis of a whip.
"Trevor…wait," her voice came in a loud whisper as he drifted toward the sounds. "There’s an access point for the cargo tubes through here. Don’t go that way. Trevor!"
He paid her no attention as he moved to the archway that, he found, led to a balcony serving as an elevated guard post above a prisoner work area. A soldier stood there, his attention focused on the slaves below.
Quietly, Trevor dared a step inside for a better look, managing to avoid notice.
He saw a big room lined with steel girders and metal mesh catwalks that smelled of steam and sweat. Other elevated observation posts remained unmanned, no doubt a symptom of diminished manpower.
Several conveyor belts flowed into the room dropping bundles into bins. From what he could see from the distance, those bundles included clothing, shoes, personal electronic devices such as shavers and hair dryers as well as other household-type items.
Human workers examined the bundles, discarding some but distributing most to work stations where the items were repaired. At those work stations labored bipedal humanoids with big puffy cheeks, wiry hair, and whiskers of a sort.
Chaktaw slaves.
Still unseen, Trevor returned to the hall and said to Nina, "No deals, no bull shit. You tell me right now, whose Earth is this? The Chaktaw’s?"
She did not hesitate. "Yes. It’s their Earth. Our mission was to wipe them out."
Trevor stepped back to the balcony again. The guard there leaned against a post in an effort to remain vertical while he drifted closer to a nap.
As he glanced over the balcony, he saw a sight he had seen too often on his home world. Sweat shops and industrial slave camps had been critical components of survival for the invading Grand Army of the Hivvan Republic on his Earth. Even the most conservative of guesses pointed to tens of thousands of his people starved or worked to death in such places since the invasion.
For the first time, Trevor Stone felt pity for a non-human creature.
He knew the Chaktaw—the Vikings—from his Earth, having fought them—no, slaughtered them—at Five Armies. While he did not regret murdering those invaders, he saw them now in a different light. This was their Earth. Their home. Nina and the men of Thebes had no more right to invade and conquer here than the Chaktaw or the Hivvans or the Duass did on his home world.
"What are you doing you ass?" one of the guards berated a slave. "I said repair this shit, not take it apart. You dumb or something?"
The Chaktaw to whom the guard spoke actually looked familiar to Trevor, albeit with more bruises and scrapes on his face. It was the Chaktaw prisoner taken from the strip-mall-like outpost they had raided, the prisoner who could speak man's language.
"You stupid…you still here... you die I think. Fromm come for you."
WHAM! A back hand from the guard sent the prisoner to the floor.
Nina joined him on the balcony. Thanks to the constant drone of machines and the continual shouts from below, the drowsy sentry did not hear them converse.
She pointed to what resembled a massive pipe affixed to the wall with an opening cut in the side. The slaves placed boxes inside that pipe.
"That’s a cargo tube," she said. "There's a platform in there that could take us to the freight elevators for the roof."
Trevor went quiet for several seconds, his eyes alternating between the tube and the prisoners and the guards. Finally he told her, "Okay. I’m taking that prisoner with me. That one who was talking."
She gasped, caught herself, and said, "No, we don’t know who to trust in there. And the Chaktaw will kill you and me if given the chance."
"Shut up. Either I’m taking the two of you with me or I’m taking just him."
Major Forest opened her mouth to protest but he did not wait to listen. Instead, he walked over to the napping guard and shouted, "Hey, wake up, soldier!"
The guard jerked straight and swung around.
Nina hustled to Trevor’s side, her hands primed to reach for her twin pistols.
"Who are you?" The sentry retorted but took notice of the woman's rank.
"I’m the guy in charge around here. Or don’t you keep up with current events?"
Trevor did not wait for the confused guard to collect his wits, hoping that news of power shifts and rumors of a returned Emperor would, at least, result in inaction. So instead of explaining, he descended a latter set in the balcony floor, calling up, "You fall asleep like that again on watch and you’ll be down here sewing shoes with the rest of the scum, hear me?"
Two dozen Chaktaw prisoners worked in the large chamber although half remained in holding pens behind jail-cell bars. The other half worked at long tables cluttered with greasy machine parts, torn fabrics, disassembled devices, and dull tools.
In addition to the one on the balcony, four guards walked the floor armed with whips and clubs. However, it was not the sentries that worried Major Forest. She tapped Trevor's shoulder and pointed to a security camera overseeing the area.
"You need to make this quick," she whispered.
He saw her meaning and nodded in understanding.
Two of the guards approached. They wore black tunics and not battle armor. One waved
at Nina's holsters and barked, "No guns on the floor."
Trevor barked even louder, "I give the orders here. Take a close look. Know who I am?"
The guard did take a close look. His eyes widened.
"Should I shoot him?" Nina played the game as best she could with a broken spirit.
"I’m the man in charge and I’m here for that worthless shit, the one I pulled off the battlefield up north. The one who can speak our language."
"That thing? It’s scheduled for Intel. I can’t release it without orders."
A loud buzz cut through the sound of tapping hammers and rolling conveyors. That buzz came from a phone which one of the guards moved to answer.
Trevor said, "Listen, asshole, my name is Trevor Stone and if that don’t mean something to you you’re in a heap of trouble."
The guard stumbled, "Shit, I recognize your face now. I heard the rumors but—"
"STOP THEM!" The guard who answered the phone shouted.
Before he could react, Trevor booted his foot into the first watchman's testicles. At the same time, Nina drew her pistols and pointed them at the second guard standing in front of them. That man raised his hands and backed away.
The prisoners and the remaining humans on the floor shouted and cried out and ducked for cover while the drowsy sentry in the balcony cocked his weapon and took aim.
Stone pushed aside the slave drivers and grabbed hold of the talking-Chaktaw's arm. At that same moment, the guard on the balcony decided to fire, his bullets ricocheting off the work table and turning the prisoners into a scrambling mass of chaos.
"Come with me."
"I no come with you. You dead."
Trevor did not wait for an answer. No matter how defiant his words, the Chaktaw had been beaten and starved and therefore could not resist being dragged toward the cargo tube.
Nina fired her pistols, chasing off the guards at ground level but unable to match the fire power from above. She threw her shoulder into Trevor, pushing him toward the opening and shouted, "Get in!"
Trevor forced the Chaktaw inside, falling on a wheeled metal cart lined with bins and straps for securing packages sitting atop tracks in a tube about the size of a small oil pipe. Nina dove in with bullets following close behind.
She then turned around and braved assault rifle rounds in order to reach outside the tube and push a big switch. A sharp electronic buzz followed, and then the tube went black as the access port closed. The cart automatically began its journey, rolling forward first slow then fast and then faster.
"Keep your heads down," she said although they did not need to be told; the tight confines of the tube forced them to remain in a prone position for the journey. "Probably take a minute or two," she added in a loud voice to be heard over the sound of squeaking wheels.
"What trick this?" The Chaktaw said in the dark.
"No trick. Just be quiet until we are clear," Trevor answered.
After several minutes of travel through the lightless tunnel, the cargo sled slowed and brakes engaged causing sparks to erupt between the wheels and track. At last, the top of the pipe disappeared and the cart rolled to a halt in a large room made of gray-colored concrete.
Several of the cargo tubes leading in from different parts of the facility came to a collective stop a few paces from a set of large elevator doors. Another wall offered a bulkhead that, no doubt, led to the rest of the complex. Certainly Director Jakob Snowe and a squad of his best friends would soon come through that door.
Nina lifted herself from the cart and said, "Looks clear but we got to move."
Trevor followed her and then turned to offer a hand to their passenger. The Chaktaw refused and, after struggling for words, said, "I no play game."
"No game," Trevor grabbed the gray coveralls the prisoner wore and hauled him up.
Apparently tired of what it perceived to be a ruse, the Chaktaw reacted with surprising agility for a starved and overworked prisoner. He shoved a knee into Trevor’s belly then threw a chop to the back of his neck. Stone fell to the concrete floor.
Major Forest placed a pistol directly to the Chaktaw's face.
"Don’t!"
Trevor slowly—with a grunt through clenched teeth—stood. He spoke between pangs of pain, "You won’t believe this, but I’m not your enemy any more. I want to help you. But first we have to get out of here. Do you understand?"
The Chaktaw did not understand. Again, either Trevor spoke too quickly for him to translate or—most likely—he did not believe. Yet what Trevor could not manage with words, Director Snowe managed with bullets.
Rifle fire snapped into the room. A bullet passed between Trevor and the Chaktaw. Snowe and his ‘friends’ moved into the room intending to make it a killing ground.
Nina shot her pistol at the attackers while urging "in the elevator!"
Trevor punched the obvious 'call' button and, fortunately, the doors immediately opened. With Nina providing cover fire, the three entered the car and managed to close the doors. Snowe's frustrated voice eked into the elevator shaft as he told his men to, "get to the roof!"
Meanwhile, the elevator ascended to the squeal of pulleys and rumbles of wheels, moving at a pace that felt unbearably slow. When the doors finally opened again, Trevor felt certain Director Snowe and his execution squad would be waiting.
Instead of guns, flickering stars and a crescent moon greeted the three escapees atop the lone flat spot on the domed building. A solitary Skipper occupied one of three landing pads and a crisp breeze swept across the roof.
"Come on, get onboard," Nina led them to the waiting craft.
"No guards?" Trevor voiced his surprise aloud.
"It's not like the whole army is after us," Nina answered. "I don’t think he was expecting you to make a break for it, anyway."
The Chaktaw dug its feet in and refused to move. Trevor grabbed his arm and said, "I know you don't trust me, but we were almost shot downstairs."
"This is a game," the enemy replied. "You pretend friend, you want me to show you Fromm place. Rather die here."
"Look, you don't have to show me anything. But if you stay here, we will both die here. Get onboard and we'll figure the rest out later."
He did not give the Chaktaw a chance to respond, yanking him to the Skipper. When inside, Trevor closed the ramp and buckled both himself and his reluctant passenger into seats.
The engines spooled to life and the booster rockets shot the craft into the sky, pinning everyone onboard to their seats. As the roar of the rockets faded, Trevor heard another noise; a steady plink-plink-plink against the fuselage. After a moment, he recognized the sound of bullets hitting the ship. Snowe had made it to the roof, but not quite in time.
As the rotors spun to life and the nose of the craft dipped as it began a more conventional and controlled flight path, Nina said, "We don't have much fuel. Maybe an hour flying time. Which way do you want me to go?"
"Any signs of pursuit?"
She consulted the onboard radar and answered, "No, nothing. If they come after us, it might not be for a while."
Trevor remembered what he had done after executing The Committee and told her, "Of course not. Snowe will be too busy locking down communications and giving the officers a choice to follow him or face a firing squad."
Nina repeated her question, "Which way do you want me to fly?"
"North," he answered. "We're going north."
"Trevor, listen, I don't know what you think you can work out with the Chaktaw but—"
"Just shut your mouth and fly the ship. I'll tell you when you can speak again."
The skipper sped across the industrial sector bathed in moonlight and pushing through streams of smoke. After a moment, they cleared the crumbling walls of the northern perimeter.
Trevor asked the other passenger, "How much of my language do you understand?"
The Chaktaw answered, "I understand good."
"We have some talking to do."
"No talking. Fromm
will come for you and your city. He will kill you all."
Trevor sighed and placed his head into his hands. Yes, this Chaktaw was probably right, particularly if Director Snowe did not get a handle on things quickly. Would the officer corps follow yet another coup? If not, that could mean civil war and that would seal the destruction of Thebes, the city he had brought back to life.
Thousands of human beings—members of his species—would die, including doppelgangers of people he knew, like Jon Brewer and Ashley Trump. Did he care? They were, after all, invaders to this Earth, yet they were his kin even if separated by a universe.
He glanced up and saw the Chaktaw's eyes glaring at him with a mixture of contempt and wonder. In those eyes he saw an even greater bond than that shared by a species. He saw a survivor from a civilization torn asunder.
At home, Trevor had watched his Earth invaded, families murdered, children enslaved, and all manner of horrors unleashed on an unsuspecting populace for reasons yet unknown. Here, the Chaktaw suffered that fate. If he felt sympathy for humanity on this world, then how could he justify the slaughter of Hivvans, Red Hands, and Redcoats at home?
Trevor Stone carried many burdens in his post-Armageddon life. Now he found a new addition to that load, the burden of knowledge.
How often he tried to cajole the Old Man into revealing secrets. How often he stood on the verge of understanding only to find he knew nothing.
Today revealed more truth than he desired. What had Major Forest told him? There were eight dimensions? Could these Earths host eight different civilizations? What of the monsters?
Or maybe the wolves are just hungry. Yes Reverend. What of those wolves? What of the pigeons and white tail deer around and outside Thebes?
On his Earth, how many ChewCows and Rat-Things prowled about?
One man’s animal is another man’s invading monster.
"We kill you all," the Chaktaw threatened again.
Yes, Fromm will destroy humanity here, if he can. The way I must destroy the invaders on my world. War is the way of it. The strong survive.
Beyond Armageddon: Book 03 - Parallels Page 37
