“What?” The vid captured the last second of a man’s life, as his body exploded into flame and fell to ash as quickly. “How did …?”
“My name is James Bouchet. Take me to my parents. Now.”
The transmission ended.
“Do not speak, Mr. Bouchet,” the admiral said. “You will waste valuable time. Your brother – and yes, he is your brother, so do not belabor the issue – was created as part of a program to evolve Chancellors past our current travails and into a brave new world. Or so they said. His genetic rebirth occurred in a parallel universe – yes, they exist, and we can access them. More or less. His return came hours later than expected, and with considerable complications, not the least being his ability to annihilate men with no visible weapons. Perhaps most disturbing, he is not compliant to Chancellory commands. The transmission ended at that moment, likely because of another seismic disruption. These tears between universes have never been stable. We have received no confirmation of the aftermath from the ground, but we should arrive on site in less than twenty minutes. We will engage with enemy forces and affect a rescue of those three individuals, including your brother.”
Valentin took a measured breath. “Yes, sir. I understand. I am prepared for engagement.”
“Of that, I have no doubt.”
“But why rescue them, sir? This … my brother … he is a mortal threat. Should we not destroy him?”
Admiral Perrone stood up, sipped the last of his café, and nodded. “Prudent strategy would suggest that outcome. However, I need him alive, at least temporarily. You see, Mr. Bouchet, you stand to lose a brother you never knew. I have far more at stake. You heard them claim the observers – our team sent through the IDF with James Bouchet – were all dead. Yes? For his sake, they’d best be mistaken – or wonderful liars. I sent a wife and son to that universe fifteen years ago.”
He straightened his uniform, turned to his officers and Valentin.
“Peacekeepers, establish engagement protocol. Prepare to exterminate all enemies of the Chancellory and wish everlasting agony upon anyone who left my family behind.”
5
Near the Interdimensional Fold
T HE FOUR OF THEM STEPPED into the sunlight. The hillside, which sloped downward several hundred meters to a tall, thick tree line of heavy pines, was sliced open by trenches. Mercenaries employed by Ophelia fired into the tree line, dodging tracers – some of which bounded off the security shield in fiery collisions while other tracers smashed magnetic seams and threw up soil, impacting like grenades.
Two of Ophelia’s recovery crew tried to enact a rescue at a deep rut, struggling to pull a third out by hand. The ground exploded at their feet, throwing them forward. Shouts dominated to the west, where a blood-soaked guard hauled a tall, thin man in a pantsuit matching Ophelia’s out of a trench. The man stumbled toward the remains of what was once a modular bivouac. Equipment lay scattered down the hill. Ophelia panicked first.
“Our ship,” she shouted. “Where is it?”
The thin man pointed south. Forty meters separated them from the bivouac. The ship’s location lost importance at the next rumble.
Jamie knew this was not a quake, the ground remaining steady beneath his feet. Sammie turned around first, her eyes exploding as she looked upward.
The side of the mountain descended – a rolling wall of soil carrying stones and trees. They had seconds.
“Run,” she cried, and they dashed for the bivouac. Along the way, they leaped narrow trenches. Michael turned his ankle when the soil beneath let go just before they reached what remained of the camp.
When they looked back, the mountain covered the entrance to the fold. Screams of desperation followed the descending hellscape.
“We lost the beacons,” a gangly man just north of seven feet tall told Ophelia, wincing as he protected a mangled left hand. “Most of the shield is gone.”
“Where is the ship, Brey?” Ophelia demanded.
“It was there,” he pointed to a hole twenty feet wide in the hillside. “The ground opened up during the quake. Rikard flew her out of here before she took any structural damage, but I saw trails. The enemy clipped a nacelle.” He tapped his forehead. “I’ve been trying to find him instream. No response. I am not sure if he crashed or … I never totally trusted Rikard.”
“The others?”
He shook his head. “This mountain is coming apart. It’s worse than when we sent the Shock Units through.”
“Try again,” she told him. “We have what we came for.”
As Brey Grinderson searched through his amp’s holocube, he stared icily at Jamie, Sammie, and Michael.
“They best be worth it, Ophelia,” he said. “You never said we’d have to die for their likes.”
“We are not dying today,” Ophelia said, then addressed the blood-soaked mercenary who rescued Brey from a trench.
“Chief,” she said. “Good. Tell me. What are our options?”
The head of the security team, a rock-hard monster of a woman with a scarred, balding head, spoke in a harsh, guttural tone, her voice seeming to echo from deep within.
“Defend as long as we can. We are exposed, and half my team is dead. I warned you about only equipping us for defensive operations. You wanted to play by the rules; the others did not. Now we fight with thump guns against flash pegs and tracers.”
“Not now, Chief. I explained about drawing too much attention through illicit purchases. We discussed …”
The chief ignored her. “The tunnel would have provided refuge, but that option has dissipated.” She looked west. “There. The ridgeline. The five of you can find temporary defense behind that stone facing, assuming the aftershocks do not induce more slides.”
She reviewed her holocube. “I recalled my last four fighters. The enemy is forming a wide net, up to two hundred meters in either direction. They have our flanks. Without extraction, they’ll take us out in ten, maybe twelve minutes.” She looked away from the battlefield projection. “We have a level position here, and the enemy is scaling a forty percent incline. The five of us will establish defensive positions in these trenches. They will provide us with an opportunity to keep the enemy off-balance.”
She examined the five civilians, including the three teens in t-shirts and jeans. “Appears only the children have weapons. The two of you,” she told Ophelia and Brey, “may need them as your last line of defense. Saved by nine-year-olds. I suggest you run now.”
“Nine?” Michael chimed in. “Seriously. I could show you something to make your head spin …”
“Not now, Coop,” Jamie said. “She’s right. We need to move.”
As they dashed toward the stone outcropping, Michael – wincing with each step on his turned ankle, asked Jamie, “That was a she? No, seriously. A she?”
Bestriding them, Ophelia turned to the three new arrivals.
“Appears they have conscripted you. Mr. Cooper, I hope your aim is as good as your false bravado.” And then to Jamie: “Time for the Jewel to offer another demonstration, perhaps.”
“What?” Brey interrupted. “These children do not understand how to go up against these mercs. And their guns look like pre-history models. They’ll have no effect against … ”
“Relax, Brey. We both know at least one of them can hold his own. The question is, for how long? And you, Miss Pynn?”
“I’m not a child, and I was trained by the best. I was meant to be a peacekeeper.” As they ducked behind the stones and took position, Sammie added, “I can kill.” She eyed Brey. “Can you?”
“Good,” Ophelia said, offering a wry smile. “You seem to be making a nice comeback. James, your thoughts?”
Jamie sat on one knee, and he sensed the agony of mercenaries falling to thump blasts and something deadlier: exploding projectiles no bigger than bullets. Whatever defenses the recovery crew established, they could not hold out for long. He knew little of military strategy, but he remembered his study of World War I. Armi
es held their ground in the trenches, but as soon as they exposed themselves, the carnage began. The three mercenaries up close were statuesque, bulging super soldiers. But they were human, and therefore fragile.
His blood roiled. Jamie heard their steps as they chased up the hillside, their hearts beating with great anticipation, while the defeated languished on this new battlefield, their brains electrified, paralyzed, mangled. The Jewel reached out to them with curious tendrils, analyzing each to determine who was most likely to make a fatal error. As the answers laid out before his mind’s eye, Jamie understood what was happening.
I didn’t kill him, Jamie thought of the man in the cavern. I consumed him. The Jewel consumed him. That’s what she meant.
As if on cue, Lydia’s final taunts roared back at him. He remembered being tossed in the maelstrom, seconds after Angela Bidwell killed him, but within grasp of new life. “You have crossed the line beyond anything that is sacred,” Lydia told him. “You will change us both. If you return to that body, you will damn yourself to a pain beyond imagining. You do not understand what you will become. The dark will drown them.”
Jamie saw the total picture, chiefly the part he tried so hard to deny every time he questioned his decision to save Sammie and Michael. I am the dark, he realized. I’m that place they go when they die. The more I kill them, the more I hear them.
“Their pain,” he whispered.
“James?” Ophelia snapped. “I asked for your thoughts?”
Patience. Strategy. You can do this.
“You don’t have enough fighters to stop them.” He held up the thump gun and the hand that reduced a man to ash.
Sammie jumped in. “J, what are you doing?”
He ignored her and pulled Ophelia close. “What you said before? That you could make sure they start lives for themselves in the Collectorate. Did you mean it, Ophelia?”
“Of course, James.”
Michael stammered. “Dude. No way.”
“Yes, way. Coop, you’re not ready for this, and I didn’t bring you here to see you die in the first thirty minutes. Sammie, you’re putting on a front. You need to heal. You can barely aim straight.”
“Jamie, no,” she said. “Those men are professionals. They’ll give us time until rescue comes.”
“Look, both of you. I did this yesterday in the woods. I let the Jewel guide me, and I made it. But now I am the Jewel. I promise, I’m not gonna die today. I got too much to do, and you gotta do what I say. This will work.” He changed to Ophelia. “And if I’m full of shit, you make sure you keep your promise.”
“I’ll see you again,” he told his best friends. “I swear to God.”
Neither friend budged, but he saw the defiance as he lighted out into the battle. He took stock of the situation. The “chief” and her fighters had reassembled, finding defensive positions in the newly-formed trenches. The hill dipped beyond them, but the enemy staggered forward, seconds from full engagement. He was exposed; they would target him first.
“No more running,” he whispered.
He aimed the thump gun, and instinct told him how to fire. He tightened his fingers inside the weapon’s viscous fluid until they lined up. Then he jolted them forward in unison, and a bolt of concussive energy chased down the hill. The disrupter hit its target, knocking one fighter back on his feet, but not enough to level him.
Fire rose in his chest. Jamie let go of his inhibitions. He locked his fingers into the forward firing position and leveled continuous bursts across the breadth of the approaching line. He had no sense of proper aim, only a wish to spread confusion.
It worked. The advancing line halted, their eyes met his, and they retaliated. Jamie stood in the open as a barrage of thump energy and tracer pegs converged.
6
T HE CHIEF TACKLED JAMIE as death raced over them both, the tracers exploding in a series of impacts several feet beyond. She lay in front of him, her weapon facing the enemy.
“All right, Junior,” she said. “I’ll retract what I said. You are no nine-year-old. You are merely insane.”
The other members of her team rose from their positions and unloaded on the enemy with a steady barrage.
“Follow my cudfrucking order.” She grabbed Jamie’s head and shifted his view. “You see that trench? When I say go, you move on all four as fast as you damn well can. Got it, Junior?”
“James. My name is James.”
“I wouldn’t care if you were Frederic Ericsson himself. Now, go.”
James did as told, while the chief laid cover fire before joining James in the narrow trench.
The chief snarled, but James did not bother to contain his smile. He never felt more exhilarated.
“It worked, didn’t it?” He said. “All you needed was a diversion.”
“I don’t know who taught you military tactics, but you gave us at best an additional two minutes.” She spat on his t-shirt. “My unit is dying because of you, and you decide it’s a good day to be a martyr. Oh, yes. I saw the stream. I know what you are. Or at least what Ophelia Tomelin and her crazy lot claim you are.”
James refused to back down, even though this woman could have snapped his neck like a twig.
“I am the Jewel, and that wasn’t all of my plan. Let me out there. I’ll finish them.”
She took a step back. “Like I saw instream? I always had a bad feeling about signing up with these re-gen fanatics. Maybe I should have let them take you down.”
“Look, I get it, OK? I ain’t had much time to figure it all out myself, but I know what I can do. I can save everybody.”
A tracer scraped the trench and exploded just off the edge, dropping a cloud of dirt down upon James and the mercenary.
“You’re just a runt,” the chief said, unfazed. “You have no idea what it means to save others. Now, you stay put.”
She reared up, towering above ground, enough to find her bearings and release concussive blasts. Fighting intensified.
The ground shook, and the soil shifted beneath him. The trench was about to collapse, maybe a section of the hill itself.
He peered over the edge, looking backward toward the rock face. Sammie and Michael rose, fired, and dipped for cover. They wasted bullets. The bodysuits were far stronger than bulletproof vests.
“I got too much work to do,” he muttered, “and we are not going to die today.”
James defied the chief and bolted from the trench, rolling over onto his stomach. His chest burned as he searched for targets. A strange and glorious thirst arrived when he zeroed in on two.
A cloud of fire descended upon the nearest enemy, throwing the fighter to the ground, writhing as he crumbled to a cinder in a matter of seconds. Another cloud followed five meters east, and then a third to the enemy’s farthest flank. All at once, every weapon redirected toward the western sky, where a dramatic mechanical whirr was interrupted by cushioned bursts.
An Admiralty Scramjet – a crab-like shadow twenty meters long blocking the heart of the afternoon sun - released a barrage of fireballs from its starboard cannons. The concentrated flames set patches of hillside ablaze.
The five mercenaries defending Ophelia’s team jumped from their trenches, as if understanding what this meant, and moved forward to take on the enemy, which fired tracers at the Scramjet.
James looked at his hand, which quivered, unfulfilled. As the fires grew, and the shouts of agony intensified, James caught his breath and grasped his madness. He turned back to his friends, who remained behind the rock face but no longer dipping for cover.
The Scramjet closed in, returning tracer for tracer, still a hundred meters away and as high. And then, something gave James pause.
Three men, decked head to toe in crimson bodysuits, leaped from the ship’s open port and defied the laws of nature, maintaining a steady course en route to the battle. They drifted, as if on a powerful gust of wind, but configured as if fighting on land. They fired continuous rounds from long, rifled extensions to their arms
, with their legs poised to take a running start when they hit the surface. He saw the impact of ground fire against their bodysuits; the tiny silver explosions did not slow the descending fighters.
James watched in awe as these warriors descended upon the Earth like angels. They abandoned fear, embraced the deadliest opposition, and sought to destroy their enemies.
James saw a discipline in these great red beasts that he needed if he was survive the maddening pain of the dark.
The three angel warriors wiped out the enemy with calm efficiency. Somewhere in the crossfire, the chief lost one of her last four fighters. But the hillside settled into sudden peace.
Michael and Sammie joined him. Together with Ophelia Tomelin and the thin man, Brey, they descended the hill a hundred meters, where the Scramjet hovered above the scarred surface.
“Are they what I think?” James whispered to Sammie.
She smiled. “Peacekeepers. Exactly as Daddy described them.”
He didn’t know if her tears were for joy at having survived or seeing at last what she always dreamed of becoming.
“Right,” Michael said. “So, don’t take this the wrong way, Sammie. But that stunt you pulled with the M16 and the helicopter yesterday? Sorry, but I gotta give the award to these guys. Seriously.” Michael stopped, tugged at James’s shirt, and frowned. “Dude. It was yesterday, right? I mean, all that shit we went through. It feels like forever but …”
“I know, Coop. It’s happening so fast.” He looked at both his friends. “What I did back there just now … I was out of control, I was selfish. And you’re right, Coop. I think we were in Austin Springs like twelve hours ago. Can’t say the last time I slept.”
Ophelia, walking in front of the threesome, lowered her voice but made sure the teens heard her.
“A word of caution. I know the man who just saved us, and I suggest when you meet him, you avoid any attempts at humor and most important, limit the details of what transpired before you crossed the IDF. No one beyond this hillside realizes you are here, and he can make sure no one ever does.” She focused on James. “I advise you to remove that thump gun at once.”
The Impossible Future: Complete set Page 32
