The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption

by YS Pascal

  Had my well-intentioned plan to rescue John really affected the lives of billions of people, including, alarmingly, my own family? If so, was there any way we—I—could repair the damage and return things to what they were? And, if I could somehow reinstate our timeline, would I then be responsible for the, the deaths of millions, like Hypatia and Heron, who were alive in this new timeline today? The possibilities were frightening—I now understood why Zygan Federation controls on time travel were so strict, and why Zygint had a whole department at Zygint Central to prevent and monitor for potential timeline changes.

  And the Zygan Federation itself? According to Spud’s theory, as Zygfed wasn’t driven by Earth history, our Ergals should have been working. Why weren’t they? If we could somehow fix them and contact friends at Zygint, maybe we could get some advice and help with this disaster. And then I could flee from the Omega Archon before he sentenced me to Hell for a thousand years.

  John tried to reach out to me—but, stewing in my guilty ruminations, I pushed him away. Spud wasn’t inclined to talk to either of us, and had left our seats for an empty one near the front of the gondola. I wanted to be alone--and yet, I had never felt so alone.

  I must’ve fallen asleep, because it was dark when I peeked out from under the blanket and saw Spud, back in his seat, conversing with John.

  “I have little evidence on which to base a theory, but one hypothesis is that Zygfed and Zygint somehow no longer exist in this brane. At least as regards to Earth.”

  John scratched his head. “You mentioned a Moon mission. Think these people made contact and something negative happened?”

  “Zygint’s Luna Outpost,” Spud corrected himself, “the one we left, that is, is underground. Doubt they’d be found if they didn’t want to be.” He put his fingertips together and leaned back. “No, there must be another explanation. I shall have to ponder the variables,” he said, waving a hand and closing his eyes.

  John sighed and looked over at me. I managed a wan smile. He rested a hand on my shoulder, and whispered. “I’m sure they’ll be all right. Don’t worry. Hope is the champion’s best tool.”

  I frowned. “You used to say patience was.”

  John laughed. “Neither of us is very patient, Sis--and thank heavens for that.” His eyes twinkled. “I’m betting on hope.”

  I gave him a big hug.

  * * *

  A memory from the year before, Earth

  John’s encouragement had helped shake me out of my funk. I fed myself the mantra that I was a catascope—and needed to rein in my emotions and stay sharp and ready to handle every new contingency. And I was also a Rush—and Rushes, John included, knew how to pull rabbits out of hats.

  Using those talents, I’d even gotten us—me and Spud—a Zygan Federation Auric Star a mere six months after we’d completed our training at Mingferplatoi.

  We’d been assigned to a routine temporal recon shift of the inner planets of our own solar system. Temporal patrols were rarely more than a formality in our bucolic octant of the Milky Way, so I wasn’t expecting trouble—except maybe a headache from the incessant wailing from our speakers of a singer Spud had been raving about for weeks. Some Italian guy, Enrico Caruso, whose booming solos were tickling my bones and making our windscreens resonate. Fortunately, barring the opera, the afternoon had otherwise been quiet.

  “Five battalions M-fanned at forty-eight mark five, status one thousand meters!” Spud suddenly blared, trumping Caruso. His eyes were glued to a holo display that had been scanning the past century.  (pronounced ‘SERJ’) fleets had been known to invade industrial planets like Earth in order to drain energy to re-fuel their ships, wreaking havoc on critical electrical supplies and infrastructure.

  I kept my voice steady. “Contact metrics?”

  “1965, 9 November, Ontario, Canada, 5:12 pm. Looks like they’re heading for our power lines.” At extreme magnification, the scan holo showed a gaggle of tiny blips that seemed to be aiming for the vital electrical grid blanketing North America’s Eastern Seaboard. I immediately activated our cruiser’s Ergal to take us back in time to the location of the target coordinates.

  Our ship M-fanned in 1965 and raced to catch the SERJ “They’re only thirty seconds from power line entry,” Spud updated, continuing to track the intruders, as we sped towards our quarry.

  “We’re not going to make it!” I grunted, and, ramped up the Zoom Cruiser’s propulsion to maximum. We watched our holos in dismay as the spherical SERJ ships entered the power lines through a Queenston station transformer, and started a cascade of blackouts all over New England as they traveled along the wires. Spud muttered an inaudible curse.

  I ordered our ship to miniaturize to SERJ scale as quickly as possible. To have a tactical advantage over the invading fleet, we mini’d our ship to only sixty microns, ten times the size of the SERJ vessels. Small enough to fly inside the power lines, but still big enough to intimidate the SERJ.

  The SERJ began siphoning electrons for their turbines, knocking out the lights city after city from Toronto to Manhattan. As the SERJ vessels charged down the lines, their turbine exhaust gave off a trail of yellow-green light.

  On our holos, the northeast corridor of the US now looked like an intricate spider web of glowing power lines. In hot pursuit, we squeezed our own miniaturized craft into the lines through a small hole in a transformer drum in New York, and finally caught up with the SERJ battalions. Hoping to profit from the element of surprise, we armed our stun beams and aimed them at the—

  Crack! Our ship shook as we were hit with a burst of fire from a regiment of SERJ that had somehow snuck behind us in the power line.

  “Evasive!” I ordered nav controls, while Spud assessed the damage.

  Crack! Crack! Eruptions of lightning surrounded our ship as the SERJ weapon bolts bounced off the electrons in the power lines to create a torrent of self-perpetuating sparks that enveloped us in a prison of photons. Crack!

  “We’re intact so far, and our grounding is holding,” Spud reported, “but we need to get out of here.” Crack! Crack! “Soon!”

  The lightning bolts were coming at us from both directions now, as  regiments in front of us in the power line had turned to attack us as well. Hoping to stall, we fired our stunners in a 360 dispersion, managing to de-power several SERJ vessels, but we still couldn’t stop the rest of the fleet from hammering us. We had to X-fan out of the power line, or we’d be electrocuted.

  The idea came to me--like a bolt of lightning. Those math uploads we got at Mingferplatoi had really paid off after all. Shouting “Möbius!”xxxvii, I entered the data into our ship’s weapons control as fast as I could and initiated the program.

  We launched two of our fusion torpedoes, followed by hardy micro-robots, one towards each end of the power line in which we were trapped. Seconds before the torpedoes reached the ends of the power line and exploded, we X-fanned our ship out of the cable. The explosions sliced the segment of the power line we’d just exited off its towers, and the thick cable fell twisting and flapping towards the ground, sparks flying from each end. The micro-robots quickly sealed the severed ends of the flailing line together, turning the power line into a closed figure-eight loop like a 3-D Mobius strip which preventing the SERJ fleet from flying out. Hovering at a safe distance, we watched the figure-eight land on a deserted wheat field, a twisted ring inside which the SERJ orbited endlessly, giving off a circle of green glowing light.xxxviii

  And giving me another idea. We tractored the Möbius strip power line with the imprisoned SERJ to the Moon and parked it at Luna Outpost for safekeeping while I commed our Chief Gary at Earth Core to clear my suggestion.

  What if we found a way to give the SERJ the fuel they needed to fly through our sector and get something out of the deal ourselves? Instead of wasting Zygint time guarding our power lines, we could set up factories on Earth to build small porous p
lastic tubes and fill them with electrons to make a kind of nano-battery. When the SERJ needed to refuel, they could fly to these tubes, filter through the microscopic pores, fill up their tanks on the electricity, and release their engine waste. The SERJ waste would then light the tubes yellow-green for a few hours and we could make a few bucks selling the tubes.

  Gary loved my suggestion and let us pitch it to the SERJ Consul on Zyga. And so, light sticks and light ropes were born. A field team from the Zygfed Bureau of Planetary Advancement developed a dummy front company on Earth and had the manufacturing plants for the plastic tubes operational in the US by 1966. Before long, the light sticks and ropes were everywhere. When needed, SERJ were able to find “gas stations” all over Earth, and Earth never had a blackout that big again.

  Spud wasn’t the type to lavish me with compliments, but he did say I was ‘a competent magician’, who’d extracted a lagomorph from millinery.

  Or, as my Ergal translated, pulled a rabbit out of a hat.

  * * *

  Over the Eastern USA—present day?

  “We’ll be touching down in Nea Athina in an hour,” Hypatia announced as we glided over the Appalachian forests. My nose was glued to the gondola’s windows, scanning the mountains below for signs of habitation. I nudged John. “Remember the hike we took in Shenandoah,” I began.

  “Two hundred kilometers south of us,” Spud interjected, in robot mode. “We are currently near the border of what was Pennsylvania and Maryland.”

  “Where is Nea Athina?” asked John.

  “At the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay,” Spud said. “Not far from what had been Annapolis.”

  John nodded. I said nothing. Spud had resumed talking to us, but our partnership weather was definitely wintry.

  Nea Athina appeared on the horizon as our blimp turned to the East. Before us glistened a city of marble and gold, each acre its own Acropolis, with buildings resembling the Parthenon and the Erechtheum adorned with ornate friezes and sculptures.

  “Capital city,” Spud said.

  “It is beautiful,” echoed John.

  Annoyed. “No, I meant that it is the capital city.” Spud added, “This USA is a loose federation of city-states, not unlike a pacifist ancient Hellenic empire. But, they have realized the value of a central location for resource distribution and management. Thus, Nea Athina.”

  “Oh,” was all John could muster.

  * * *

  Nea Athina—present day?

  We thanked Hypatia as we de-airshipped at Daedalus Airfield and made our way to the gates. From the ground, the travertine avenues and marble buildings looked ever more imposing and ostentatious. Zygint Central, and Mikkin itself, Zyga’s capital, could learn a thing or two about classical grandeur from Nea Athina.

  “Now what?” John, ever practical, asked.

  “Heron has arranged for us to visit a diviner. He was supposed to have been here to meet us.” Spud scanned the crowds once again.

  “A what?” John asked.

  “A diviner. A seer, an alienist,” said Spud. “Whose insights can help us strategize our best course of action.”

  “We’re a day late. All those stops for the weather. Maybe he left already.” I shrugged. “You got an address?”

  Spud shook his head. “Heron would only give me a description of his appearance and his name. Lester Samuel Moore.”

  “Now that’s an unusual name,” John said, “for around here anyway.”

  “Yes, it is singular. We shall have to query Mr. Moore about it after he arrives.”

  “Are there phones or other communication devices we could use to try to reach him?” I queried.

  “Excuse me,” John said to a passing pedestrian. “Where can I find a telephone?”

  The pedestrian frowned. “In the museum of technology, I suppose,” he said, “on Constitution Avenue.”

  John smiled politely. “Capital. And more modern communications?”

  “Ah, you are Xenoi,” the man returned. “Three blocks down on Independence Avenue.” He pointed to a broad boulevard on our left. “The Ministry of Intercourse can assist you during your stay.”

  John thanked the Good Samaritan and we set off as directed to the Ministry of Intercourse. None of us were in a mood to make the obvious jokes.

  * * *

  The Ministry of Intercourse looked like a massive Lincoln Memorial and was filled with visitors seeking services, and, well, intercoursing. We waited for an hour before a customer service contributor was available.

  “Bureaucracies are an exasperating constant in a sea of change,” John whispered to me as we sat in line.

  “You should see Orion Alpha,” I said, filling him in on my adventure with Benedict’s nasty lieutenant Burr at the University of Daralfanoon.

  “You met Big Red?” John chuckled. “Wouldn’t want to run into him in a dark alley unarmed—even if he’s half my size.”

  John shared the tale of his Zygan Intelligence mission to Megara, where he’d partnered with Sarion’s older brother to prevent an invasion led by Burr and a team of Benedict Andarts. John had single-handedly rescued his partner from execution by micro’ing and M-fanning inside Burr’s stun gun and sabotaging the trigger release. The gun discharged the laser beam backwards, singeing Burr’s scalp to match the color of his hair, and distracting the screaming Andart long enough for John to help Sarion’s brother escape.

  The hour passed too quickly; I’d relished the chance to bond with my own brother as a fellow catascope.

  The customer service contributor was able to locate an address for Moore on the outskirts of the city, but her expression implied that the neighborhood was far from a showpiece. We could arrange to rent an electric vehicle at the Ministry of Transportation or just ride the maglev train to within a twenty minute walk from the location. We opted for the train.

  She then provided us with disks the size of a mini-CD as loaners. “Drop these in any ‘Returns’ box when you leave our city,” she instructed, assuming that we knew how to use them. We all decided it was best to pretend that we did.

  “The train’s over here,” I said, pointing to a ramp leading to a crowded station.

  “Something we have to do first,” said John.

  “You are correct,” Spud said, “Without Heron’s generosity to sponsor us, we will need currency.”

  “That’s not what I meant, but, okay, what do you suggest?”

  Both of the men looked at me. My hands instinctively went to my ears. “No!” My diamond earrings had been a gift from Connie on my 16th birthday. They could be the last memento of a sister I might never see again.

  Spud was running a finger over his mini-disk. “I spotted a currency exchange vendor back near the airfield.” His tone did not invite debate. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The pawnshop contributor had laughed at our attempts to trade in the diamonds. “Plentiful around the world, and worth very little, my dear.”

  “I guess there’s no DeBeers monopoly to jack up the prices,” John muttered.

  “Now the gold studs,” the shopkeeper examined the earrings with a loupe, “Yes, real gold. For those I can offer you something.”

  I reluctantly consented to letting the treasured jewelry go, but only after my companions promised that we could return and repurchase the earrings once our Ergals were operating again and we were out of this…mess. I wouldn’t want to have to face Connie and tell her that we’d had to pawn her heartfelt gift.

  We ended up getting enough drachmas to be able to cover our food, shelter, and transportation for a couple of days. Hopefully, this ‘diviner’ Heron had recommended could help us out before these resources ran out. I wasn’t eager to have to sell my gold navel ring.

  John guided us to a train station north of the airfield despite Spud’s protests that we were headed in the wrong direction. “Let me have your Ergal,” John demanded as we sat in the cushioned seats.
He pulled up the geographic display and studied it during the train’s smooth launch.

  “It’s the old maps,” I sighed. “Won’t help us here.”

  John pulled out his mini-disk, ran his fingers across it, and set about comparing the maps on both tools. “It will for what I’m trying to do.”

  Spud’s voice was a whisper. “Is that wise?”

  “It’s necessary,” John responded.

  * * *

  We de-trained in a deserted area an hour out of Nea Athina. A small brick shed served as a shield against the elements for waiting passengers. Otherwise, we were surrounded by a thick forest sliced by a few dirt trails.

  “You want to tell us why we’re here, Bro?” I asked, gazing at the uninhabited forest before us.

  John smiled. “I’m betting that we’ll find that our worries were for naught.”

  “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, eh?” said Spud, cryptically. “Very optimistic of you.”

  John shrugged. “Some faiths believe that life flows like a river. Even if you change its course, it returns back to its natural bed. Beyond this forest, I expect to see my family once again.”

  “Faith is the operative word, indeed,” muttered Spud, as we set off on one of the trails.

  Monitoring my Ergal, John guided us along one of the paths for another half-hour of trekking. Could John be right? Could we actually be only a few miles away from our farmhouse in Maryland—with our family living in this new world but still intact? I felt a twinge of hope, and a rush of energy. With each footstep, I felt my eagerness grow, and my burden of guilt lighten. Wait til I showed everyone who I was bringing home.

  Thirty, forty minutes, and we were still hiking through the dense forest. My enthusiasm had been tempered by growing worry. There had been no settlements, no clearings, along our way. None of the roads or landmarks I’d remembered. Had we taken a wrong turn and gotten lost?

  John insisted we were on the right path. “Anytime now.” But I detected an edge of concern in his tone as well. My feet began to feel heavier and heavier as we trudged forward.