Ascension
Children of the Spear
Book One
By Rhett Gervais
Ascension
Children Of The Spear: Book One
Rhett Gervais
Editor: Katie King
Cover: Jake Caleb, J Caleb Design
Formatting: Polgarus Studio
Published December 2018
Copyright © 2018 Rhett Gervais
Kindle Edition
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to others. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author
Table of Contents
Prologue: The Blackwood Incident
Chapter 1: Cherry Hill
Chapter 2: Ascension
Chapter 3: New York — Bright Lights, Big City
Chapter 4: Divinity Corps
Chapter 5: A Cold Night in Ann Arbor
Chapter 6: In a New York Minute
Chapter 7: Clean and Sober
Chapter 8: Seahawk Down
Chapter 9: The Infirmary
Chapter 10: Incoming!
Chapter 11: Breakfast at Fort Carson
Chapter 12: Deep in Hell’s Kitchen
Chapter 13: Off the Wagon
Chapter 14: What We Face
Chapter 15: A Day at the Front
Chapter 16: Beef and Teriyaki
Chapter 17: Fading After Midnight
Chapter 18: The Guns of Battery Park
Chapter 19: Crossing the Potomac
Chapter 20: The Battle of Washington
Chapter 21: D.C. to Pennsylvania
Chapter 22: A Walk in Central Park
Chapter 23: Iron Mountain
Chapter 24: Colorado Dreaming
Epilogue
Prologue: The Blackwood Incident
July 2063
We descended from heaven on wings of amber and gold to deliver justice, swiftly and without mercy.
The world of Charleston was a storm of blue and red light, the inky black of night banished by the glare of emergency vehicles, the moon and stars obscured by a heavy pall of choking ash and smoke. The normally quiet town was a riot of screams and sirens.
From the moment we landed the mortals surrounded us, eyes wide and mouths agape, trembling hands reaching out to touch and feel, quickly pulling back, marveling that we were real.
We did our best to endure their stares and petty questions. Michael, our leader, stood head and shoulders above them looking down kindly at those encircling him, his deep-set eyes full of warmth, his brilliant smile putting everyone at ease. They parted for us, grateful we had come to save them.
“Bobby, can we do this in time? How many soldiers? Parishioners?” asked Michael, gently pushing his way through the crowd of onlookers.
Slowing his pace, Bobby opened his senses to the goings-on in the burning building. He could feel every soul trapped in the complex, know if they were a man or woman, living or dead. He could distinguish each defiant soldier from each frightened child as easily as he could his hand from his foot. It was a strange ability, beginning not long after his change—subtle at first, like knowing who was about to enter a room, or knowing who was on the other end of a call before picking up. Distance never seemed to matter. It grew stronger with time, almost to the point of madness. As it progressed, he could soon tell where everyone in a building was, if someone had a bum knee or was coming down with a cold. It had taken many painful months, but he learned to control it, to block out all the noise. Better still, he could focus, know exactly where every soul was in the burning building. “It’s like they said: Sunday mass at the biggest church in the country. Just over fifty thousand souls present, a handful of soldiers, more dead than I can count,” he finished with a whisper.
Giving him a thankful pat on the shoulder, Michael resumed his slow pace through the masses, lumbering towards the legion of rescuers gathered in the foreground of the burning stadium, a bickering mess of police, firemen, and a defiant army major from Fort Charleston all pounding their chests, each man sure they had the means to solve this crisis while in the same breath assigning blame for the failures that brought them here. By the time they arrived at the command center things had reached a boiling point, a shouting match between the three men and the army major having erupted, promising to turn violent in a heartbeat, the safety of the souls in danger forgotten in place of ego.
“Enough!” shouted Michael, elbowing his way between the arguing men, easily casting them aside like small children. “I have been ordered by the state to take command here.”
The three men, who a moment before had been at one another’s throats, saw a threat to their authority and immediately put their differences aside, banding together to challenge the man who was to replace them.
Michael stood in the center of them, waiting. The police chief spoke first, a tired-looking dark-skinned man whose thinning hair and paunchy belly told the story of too much time behind a desk. Bobby could feel his weariness, his old heart sluggishly pumping, the result of multiple heart attacks and too many cigarettes. The chief grimaced as he took a swig from the coffee in his hand. “What is this, Halloween? We ain’t got no candy for ya. Get yer ass outta here, boy, how the hell did you kids get past the line anyway?” he said, giving them a withering look.
Not saying a word, Michael reached into one of the many pockets in his long crimson coat, the gold cross on his chest and down his sleeves reflecting purple in the emergency lights. Removing several small tablets from the breast pocket, he handed orders to each of the men in turn, then crossed his long arms against this thin chest, waiting. Bobby watched their defiance fade away as they read, each of them visibly paling the longer they read. When they were done, there were slow nods and mumbled apologies. The fire marshal, a big man, wide and solid, who had looked only moments ago ready to pummel everyone around him with his meaty fists, looked away, shoving his hands into his coat.
Finally Michael stood face to face with the major from Fort Charleston arms crossed and simply waiting. Watching the two of them, Bobby could see the poor man was at his wits’ end, his eyes red rimmed, his whole body like a frayed rope about snap from overuse.
“I don’t care who you are,” said the major, suddenly breaking, the hysteria growing with each word. “Those are my men in there and they are simply asking for their due. They have families to take care of, responsibilities. They served with distinction and honor—they deserve better than this!”
Bobby saw the major’s eyes narrow as Michael put his hands on the man’s shoulders, gently removing the golden oak leaves pinned there. The major’s face suddenly went pale as Michael crushed the leaves in his hands before letting the small pieces of tin fall to the floor. “They’re not your men anymore. More importantly, after the vile acts committed today, they’re not even soldiers anymore. You are relieved, sir.”
Bobby wrinkled his nose, frowning as the former major fell to the floor scrambling after the worthless pieces of tin, wondering how such a man could have risen so high.
Turning to face the remaining two men, Michael began, “These are my people, and if they give you an order, I expect it to be followed as if I gave it myself.” He began waving a hand towards them. “Elizabeth, my second in command, will be running things out here. Myself, Andrew, and Bobby will breach the church in the next few minutes. There will be casualties, so civilians will need immediate medical support once we give the all-clear. I expect full cooperation from everyone—understood?”
The police chief shrugged, handing the orders back to Michael, his lips twisting into a smirk. “Andrew, Bobby, Betty-fuckin’-Sue,” he said, f
ollowed by a short bark of a laugh. “Shouldn’t you people have some fancy names to go along with your ridiculous costumes?”
Bobby smiled at the mockery. Their commanding officer was old enough to remember the golden age of comics from generations gone by and had given them code names to be used with the public, silly things they quickly discarded and only relevant on a computer screen somewhere. Michael was supposed to be ‘Lightstar’; Elizabeth was called ‘Stormrage’; Andrew, ‘Vortex’; and, lastly, they had assigned Bobby the most uninspiring name of them all, ‘Vision.’ As a group, they had all decided to ignore him, their frowns and hand-wringing enough to put the matter to rest.
A shouting match between the police chief and Michael brought Bobby’s attention back to the present. The small dark-skinned man was wagging his finger at the lot of them, his nasally tone beyond condescending. “How in Sam Hill are you four going to stop highly trained, fully armed, decorated Army servicemen? That whole place is wired to blow and the man in charge in there says he has enough explosives to take down the whole building. You clowns are going to get people killed.”
Listening to the old policeman’s harsh tone, a line formed in the center of Bobby’s forehead as his eyebrows drew together, and as he brushed a hand across the stubble on his face, he fought the urge to crush the old policeman’s weak heart for his attitude.
For the first time in his young life, he took pride in how he looked. The red and gold uniforms were a thing of beauty: form-fitting crimson coats, red with gold epaulets at the shoulder; golden crosses over their hearts; a wide black belt at the waist; pants straight-legged and finishing into knee-high black leather boots. The look was regal, professional.
“People have already died, sir, more than you would care to admit to the press. We’re just here to clean up your mess,” said Michael, shrugging off the police chief’s insults. Taking a step back, he raised his hands and a storm of amber light suddenly appeared, cascading over his body in a halo so bright it muted the blue and red strobing from the emergency vehicles. The light moved like a living thing, suddenly taking the shape of wings on his back wider than a man was tall. “Tell their leader we are sending in a negotiator, and that he will be alone. We will try to keep casualties to a minimum,” said Michael, looking skyward. “Bobby says there are more than a dozen soldiers on the roof. Liz, I need you to get up there, put out the fires, kill their electricity, and remove those soldiers from play.”
The police chief sputtered in disbelief, shaking his head back and forth. “How the hell are you clowns gonna—”
“Easily done, Michael,” said the Asian woman at his side, acknowledging orders with a slight bow of her head. Before anything further could be said, she extended her arms upwards, a look of divine wonder flickering across her features, thin lips turned up in a secret smile. Bobby could feel it before it actually happened, a drop in pressure, the wind suddenly stilling. Then without warning they were knocked back by a jet of hot air that hurled her skyward faster than he could blink. As she vanished into the night sky, Bobby could see flashes of lightning in her wake, chasing her across the dark clouds, the night suddenly turned to day as thunder echoed from the heavens. They held their breath as dozens of lightning strikes suddenly kissed the roof of the building, covering the roof in a cascading shower of sparks and overloading the transformer on the side of the building, casting the entire area into darkness. Then the heavens opened and a deluge of rain, fat and heavy, pummeled them, drowning the flames.
Blinking away the afterimage of the sudden storm, Bobby flinched as Michael’s amber glow spread out to encompass Andrew and himself, flickering wings of golden energy emerging on each of their backs, lifting them gracefully above the awestruck crowd. They hung there for a moment, burning amber wings spreading wide, taking them higher and higher before surging off to save those who could be saved, leaving a trail of light in their wake.
***
Blackwood Church was once a stadium for the South Carolina Panthers until they had moved out of state and had retained much of the original layout, a large oval ring of main and upper deck surrounding a gridiron. The church had converted center field into the main stage, encompassed by floor seating for those wealthy enough to pay for the main floor, the outer ring having changed very little from the original stadium, with only a touch of padding and a place for prayer books indicating that it was a house of worship. From outside, Bobby had sensed that the commanding officer had forced most of the hostages onto the stage and field, placing soldiers evenly spaced around the oval to control entry and exits.
Cutting through a maintenance hatch near the roof, they descended into the darkened arena, touching down silently on a suspended walkway high above that granted them an unencumbered view of the entire area. What they could see was mostly dark, with small pools of emergency lighting scattered across the arena. On the main stage they had gathered the high-profile hostages, the leader of the ministry along with his wife and children. Even from this height Bobby could see the commanding officer pacing, railing at the minister and his family, pointing to a collapsed portion of the stadium west of the stage where his men were frantically digging through the rubble. He could sense bodies trapped in small pockets of the fallen church, men, women, and children whose only crime was standing in the wrong place.
Drawing his team’s attention with a raised finger, Michael spoke in a harsh whisper, “Bobby, what do we got?”
“As far as I can tell, four entrances on the sides of the oval each manned by a pair of soldiers, six on stage, and I count twenty more doing crowd control on the main floor.”
“Alright, we need to incapacitate everyone on the upper level. I need the two of you to do that, understood?”
“What are you going to do?” asked Andrew, leaning over the railing to get a better view.
“I’m going to try to talk to that idiot,” said Michael, glaring at the soldiers on the stage, “make him see reason. In any case, we can assume that the Colonel has some sort of switch for the explosives, so we need to work fast. You two use darkness and noise from the digging to cover your movements.”
Giving the other two men a brief nod, Bobby removed a leather-wrapped baton about the length his forearm from his long coat. Walking to the end of the suspended walkway, he leapt, effortlessly careening two stories down to one of the tunnel openings, landing with cat-like grace in front a pair of surprised soldiers whose eyes went wide seeing him appear from the darkness. Before either man could blink his hand shot out, his baton piercing the exposed windpipe of the soldier on his left with a hollow crack, covering his hand in warm blood. A heartbeat later he spun on the ball of his foot, his boot heel striking the other soldier in a blinding roundhouse kick to the side of his temple, driving the hapless soldier headfirst into the nearby concrete divider, knocking him senseless. Giving no quarter, Bobby planted his booted foot on the fallen man’s throat, twisting hard before sprinting onward to the next pair farther down the path.
As he ran, he could see Michael descend from the rafters, amber wings aflame, casting shadows on the gathered congregation. “Colonel Wilcott,” he boomed, hanging in midair, “by the United States Code, title 10, section 892, article 92, you are relieved of duty and are under arrest for dereliction of duty. I have orders to terminate if you and your men do not come peacefully.”
Not waiting to see the colonel’s reaction, Bobby extended the length of the baton until it was taller than himself. Coiling like a spring, he vaulted high above into the darkness, aiming for another pair of heavily armored men who had focused on the drama on the floor below. Descending from his great leap, he pummeled the unsuspecting soldier with a double-legged kick to his sternum, blasting the air from his lungs and knocking him deep into the entryway tunnel behind him. The man beside him wasted no time, bringing up his forearms like a boxer to protect his face and neck. Anticipating Bobby’s next strike, the soldier skillfully dodged right to avoid the brunt of the incoming blow, transitioning into a spin
ning kick that knocked Bobby from his feet.
Bobby fell hard to his back, winded and momentarily put on the defensive as his opponent was suddenly on top of him, pinning him down. He had no time to think, only to respond with pure instinct, warding off blow after blow before crossing his forearms like an X just in time to ward off an incoming knife aimed directly for his heart. While he was stronger, he still struggled to throw off his attacker who, seeing his attack had failed, suddenly rolled backward and un-holstered his Beretta in a single smooth motion, ready to fire, only to find that Bobby had been faster, locking the other man’s arm in a grip that forced him to drop the weapon before elbowing him directly between the eyes, knocking him unconscious.
With two more dispatched, he continued on, engrossed in the confrontation on the stage. From his vantage point, he could see Colonel Wilcott, both thumbs hooked into his tactical vest, undeterred. “I don’t know who you are, son,” the colonel began, “and I don’t really give a shit. We have enough plastic explosives in this church to collapse the entire thing, so I’ll give you a minute to forget this bad idea and get the hell out of here before you get these God-fearing people killed.”
“You’d kill all of these people over money,” said Michael, stalling for time. His wings vanished as he spoke, replaced by a stadium-sized shield that covered most of the congregation clustered together on the gridiron.
Slowing for a moment, Bobby could sense something was different about the pair at the next entrance. From their movements he could tell they were anticipating an attack, separating in an attempt to flank him. Unlike them, he didn’t have to guess; he knew exactly where they were. Twisting his baton, he pulled off the tip, releasing the monofilament whip coiled inside. Bobby didn’t like the weapon—it was difficult to use, and one of the few things that could hurt him—but time was of the essence, so the risk would have to be taken. With a practiced ease he flicked the weighted tip of the weapon, slicing into the soldier who had moved to the upper level, causing him to fall to his knees gripping his throat and clawing for breath. Retracting the invisible line with the push of a button, he attacked with the whip once again, close enough to sever the man’s head from his neck, a fountain of blood gushing from his headless corpse.
Ascension: Children of The Spear: Book one Page 1
