Off duty, Spud heads back to Europe himself for a couple of months, spending weekends tending to his mother’s estate in France, and weekdays in those intimidating British public schools. Anything to get time away, he insists, from Everett Weaver’s insipid leadership of Earth Core.
As for me, after waving “buh-bye” to the paparazzi, I pulled the window shades down, locked the doors of my Malibu bungalow, and set the alarm. The marine layer was creeping in and I didn’t bother to wait to see my world turn gray. I M-fanned to Maryland, where late spring on the farm is a lush garden warmed by bright sunshine, my very own Eden. My plan was to camp out for several months between Zygint duty shifts in my true home in the Appalachians until filming would begin again on Bulwark.
I couldn’t avoid wondering what had happened to the souls we had left behind on HD5924. Were they successful immigrants to another dimension where the fruits of knowledge were ripe for their picking? Had they died during transport, and transitioned en masse to Level 3? Or had they, like the John in my brother’s story, left the planet—the universe--Icarus for the vacuum of nothingness, from which no one had ever returned? I would also have to take a few weeks this summer to return to Zyga and try to uncover the secrets behind Project Helios and my brother’s…death.
The whole family was sitting around the dinner table when I arrived back East. I took one of the two empty chairs, sitting between Andi and Blair, to join everyone in a hearty meal of vegetable stew. We had a lot to catch up on. George had passed his bar exam, Connie had gotten engaged, Kris had won a music award in Vegas, and Billy’s Little League team was in the semi-finals. It was wonderful to all be together again. Almost. My eyes tried not to wander to the only unfilled seat, where with each glance I’d hoped to see John’s tall frame and his friendly face. I ended up repeatedly disappointed, seeing … nothing.
Nothing. Was that John’s fate, as he had written in his story? Or had his driving passion led him to write another ending for himself, in a world beyond our own? A world forbidden to everyone except foolhardy villains and beings who yearn to fly.
Kris was nattering on about plans for her new CD, and I politely tried to turn my attention back to the rest of my family. And then I saw it, just a blur in the corner of my eye, in the empty seat I was desperate to avoid. The silver water pitcher in front of me taunted me with a reflected view. I looked, and gasped. John!
Ghostlike and transparent, emaciated, his eyes sunken and dull. His expression was a silent pleading that grew more intense as he faded slowly from my sight. I turned to look directly at his chair. It was, as before, empty.
“Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best title, but it’s hot!” Kris said accusingly, in response to my gasp.
Shaken, it took me a minute to process her remark, and I responded with a wan, “I hear you.” I scanned the faces of my siblings. Some were looking at me with a bit of concern, but none seemed to be reacting as if they too had seen my momentary vision. I took a deep breath, smiled at Kris and then the others, and added, “Hot sells. Go for it.”
And filled my mouth with a convenient spoonful of vegetable stew.
Had I simply imagined I’d just seen John? From another brane? Desperate? Alive? I’d come home to Maryland to be with my family and catch my breath, but perhaps there was another family member that I needed to seek out. One who needed my help. Right away.
We had waited for John for so long. I had waited… But what if John was wrong, and ‘patience is not always the champion’s best tool’?
Pleading fatigue, I excused myself from the table and ran up to my bedroom, my fingers reaching for my Ergal. First stop, London. To pick up Spud, whom I needed by my side. Then…
I closed the door, pulled my Ergal out of my pocket, and activated it. Maybe, just maybe, a Rush’s best tool is … action.
The emprise continues…
Redemption
The Zygan Emprise, Book 2
aka
Abyssal Redepmption
A Spark of That Immortal Fire
By Y. S. Pascal
www.zygfed.com
Book 2
ABYSSAL REDEMPTION
A Spark of That Immortal Fire
Pity the man imprisoned in his own mind. It is the cage from which he can never escape, except, of course, by death. And if death were to run from his arms, taunting him from an unreachable distance, man’s thoughts would fade into the ether, trees falling in the woods that no one can hear.
Except the Ursans.
--Lester Samuel Moore
Chapter 1
Galaxy Quest
Where time and place are meaningless
The gaunt young man looked up at his tormentors and opened his mouth to scream. Only a whimper escaped his cyan lips before he collapsed unconscious onto the spongy surface of the pediment under his shackled feet.
“Death will come quickly,” the empyrean woman declared to her companion as she tapped the youth’s head with the point of her shoe. “He was a fool.”
The elderly man blinked back tears. Allowing himself one last glance at the prone victim, he began his transformation—reborn as a transparent liquid which oozed into the gaps in the porous ground and disappeared. The woman, too, was melting into the permeable layer on which the body lay. Within seconds, the cushioned layer itself had fully dissolved, and once again the young man lay silent and surrounded by infinite emptiness. Alone.
* * *
Great Britain, 1871
“What happened? What’s the rush?” I whispered as I caught up to the panting first-former in a too-tight tuxedo who was running down the stone path to Eton College Chapel. Several other long-legged teenage boys sped by us, black gowns flapping, and we upped our pace to keep up with the crowd.
“An execution.” There was a disturbing hint of excitement in my “classmate’s” voice. “A rip for Neville Minor. Hurry, Rush, or we shall miss it.”
I suppressed a shiver under my own black robes. Execution? In high school? These British boarding schools were worse than I thought. I’d uploaded enough Dickens before time looping back to the past to know that 19th century London wasn’t exactly a Beverly Hills spa, but murdering teenagers in British boarding schools hadn’t come up in any background files. What possible crime could this Neville kid have committed to deserve death? Even the Zygan Federation’s ruler, the Omega Archon, had never imposed the death penalty on its worst criminals and terrorists. Much less on push-the-limits teens like me.
I brushed my fingers through my blonde windblown curls. I wasn’t used to having hair down to my collar, Shiloh Rush’s trademark was a spiky short haircut in a modern punk style. Funny, disguised as a clean-shaven 13-year-old boy on this—ahem, unauthorized--time loop, I actually had longer locks than I sport playing teen space cadet Tara Guard on our TV show Bulwark.xxxv
“Cap the beaks or you shall get swished as well,” my jogging partner—Richards, I think he’d said his name was—buzzed. “We’re the last of the tugs.”
Flipping up my tails, I reached a hand in the back pocket of my trousers and felt for my Ergal. Anamorphed into the shape of an antique stopwatch, the Zygan all-in-one tool had not only transported me back to 19th century Britain, but was supposed to translate foreign words directly and silently into my brain. I’d set it for England and the correct date, but still didn’t have a clue what Richards was saying. Eton had a language of its own.
We arrived at an open clearing and clambered over some large granite blocks to get a better view of the arena before us. In the center of the muddy courtyard below was a wooden box shaped like a stepstool. On it knelt a boy no older than my 12-year-old brother Billy looking ashen and terrified as he was being held down by two muscular sixth-formers. I scanned the yard, but saw no sign of a guillotine, gallows, or the executioner’s axe. Good. There might still be time to save Neville’s life.
I couldn’t help but flash to my own ??
?school days” a couple of years ago at the Mingferplatoi Academy as a Zygan Intelligence trainee. Zygan Intelligence catascopes, agents, were expressly forbidden by our kingdom, the Zygan Federation, to interfere in local cultures. “Observe and Preserve” had been our mantra as cadets. But there was no way I was going to stand by and watch a real-life horror film play out for this crew of lusty adolescent voyeurs. I had to create a distraction of some sort that wouldn’t violate Zygfed’s strict rules, but would give the poor kid down there a shot at breaking away from his captors.
A loud murmur rose up from the audience as two gray-haired men decked in long black robes walked onto the grounds, the taller of the two carrying a bundle of branches tied together. I frowned. They’re not actually thinking of burning him to death with that kindling, are they? If I was going to engineer a rescue, I’d better live up to my last name—Rush.
My eyes landed on a on an enormous elm whose leaves overhung the field. Were those black fuzzy spots among the foliage birds?
I pulled out my stopwatch Ergal and, after checking that the gazes of Richards and his classmates were intent on the arena’s spectacle, I casually put the chain ring next to my right eye. Under the 20x magnification of its barely visible lens, I could easily see, perched on the tree limbs, yup, a flock of ebony ravens. I flashed on a quote from my uploads of Edgar Allan Poe. Were they an ill omen for poor Neville? If I could only act in time, nevermore.
Hiding my Ergal back under my robes, I picked up a two inch rock from the dirt and grass by my feet. Pressing the watch face with a secreted hand, I morphed the Ergal into a slingshot, pulled it out again, and, drawing on the skills I’d gained as a kid on our Maryland farm, shot the rock over Richards’ head at the big tree.
Unfortunately, I never had developed very good aim with such a primitive weapon. Yes, I missed. The elm, that is. The rock arced up over the crowd and started its fall, landing directly between the shoulder blades of the tall man gripping the branches. Professor Gray-hair let out a piercing scream and threw the bundle up in the air, terrifying the ravens, which cawing and shrieking, swooped out of the tree en masse. The errant bundle of sticks bounced off the bald pate of the shorter of the two masters before splashing into a puddle, showering both men with splatters of mud.
The students’ rumblings and laughter echoed across the field, giving me time to anamorph my Ergal back into a watch and join the chorus of “Neville, Neville” from the stands. Wouldn’t do to get caught myself amidst this barbarism. I did manage an honest ‘whoop’ though, when, distracted by the circus, the older teens holding Neville finally released their grip. There’s your break, kid, take it. To my amazement, pale and shivering, Neville stood stiffly by their side. “Run, dammit,” I muttered under my breath. Would I actually have to go down there and rescue him?
I jumped up a foot when a strong, firm hand grabbed my shoulder from behind. My Zygan Intelligence training kicked in instinctively and I spun around, right arm extended, locking my fingers together to land a disabling karate chop on my attacker.
But a second strong, firm hand stopped my fingers an inch from their target, my fellow agent’s wiry neck.
“Spud!” I grunted, as both of his strong, firm hands pulled me away from the other students, and prodded me out of earshot towards a stone archway back down the path from whence we’d come. Though I wasn’t exactly short at almost 5’9, Spud towered over me by at least a few inches.
Turning to face me, his brown hair slicked back and his brows knitted over piercing gray eyes, William “Spud” Escott’s expression was as dark as his robe. “What in blazes do you think you’re doing?!”
“Trying to save Neville from the blazes,” I nodded towards the show. “They were going to execute him--I had to do something! What? What’s so funny?” Spud had uncharacteristically erupted with deep guffaws.
“’Tisn’t that kind of an execution, Rush,” Spud finally returned, still chuckling. “Trust me, Neville is not about to die. Though his bottom may be a bit aflame for a few days after Hornby’s punitive handiwork with the birch.”
You mean--oh. That’s what those branches were for. Still, beating students—barbaric much?
Serious again, Spud added, “On the other hand, if the Omega Archon discovers you’ve been interfering…”
I raised a hand. Spud didn’t need to remind me how painful our own ruler’s sentences in Hell had been whenever I’d violated one of the gazillion Zygan Federation rules.
“And I have received no missive about an assignment. Why exactly are you here anyway?” Spud queried, eyeing my costume as a seventh-grader at the boys-only “public school” with obvious disdain. “Dressed like that.”
I met his gaze despite my wavering voice, “Just me. I came to find you.” A whisper. “I saw John.”
An eyebrow went up. “Your brother?”
I nodded, and recounted John’s spectral manifestation at our Maryland farm the evening before. At barely 18 years of age, our oldest brother John had stepped in to raise all of us after Grandpa Alexander passed away. We never expected that five years later, we’d lose John, too.
John had bid us good-bye for what we thought would be a short tour of duty in the US Army. A month later, he’d been officially reported missing in action. Gone for good.
That message didn’t sit well with me, so I launched a quest to find my lost brother which had led me to the gates of the Zygan Federation, a multi-planetary kingdom unknown to our relatively primitive Earth. I soon discovered that, at age sixteen, John had joined Zygfed’s universe-renowned Zygan Intelligence Agency as a catascope, an agent. Figuring I’d learn more about John’s secret life “from the inside”, I signed on the dotted line when I turned 16 to become a catascope as well.
I’d uncovered that John’s graduate school research with subatomic energy particles at the University of Maryland’s synchrotron had somehow tied in with a top secret Zygint mission called Project Helios. After months of diligent investigation, I stumbled on clues that John may have been working undercover on inter-dimensional transports along with the Zygan Federation’s Public Enemy #1, Theodore Benedict. Unfortunately, I’d had no success in figuring out where my brother could be, or if he was even still alive. John’s trail had grown cold.
Sharing a rowdy supper with my seven brothers and sisters last night, my eyes had wandered to the empty chair where, after three long years, we had almost stopped hoping he’d somehow magically be seated. For just a flash, reflected in our silver water pitcher, a cadaverous image of John appeared, his eyes pleading for help. By the time I’d taken a second look, he was gone. No one else had seen his ghastly, ghostly image, but I was certain that John was alive and reaching out to me from—from…?
Spud raised the other eyebrow. “And then?”
“That’s it. ”
“An hallucination, certainly.”
“No, Spud, it was real. It was John.” I blinked to dam in the dampness. “He needs my—our help. I think he’s trapped in another dimension, another brane.” I paused, hesitating. “When Benedict had us locked in those jail cells on his planet-ship, I had a vision.”
Spud’s pale skin turned ashen. I assumed he was remembering the vision he’d had during that imprisonment, reliving the childhood tragedy that cruel Theodore Benedict had somehow unleashed from Spud’s chest of repressed memories. The long-buried secret that Spud’s mother had been murdered at the hands of his father.
“A dream,” Spud whispered after a moment of silence. Louder: “I have concluded that they were merely dreams.”
“Well, it sure as hell felt real. I saw John and Benedict just a few feet in front of me--and Wart.”
After years as an honored hero of Zygfed, crack Zygan Intelligence agent Theodore Benedict had betrayed our kingdom and our ruler, the Omega Archon. Forced into exile, Benedict had become a terrorist, returning to our galaxies and launching a ca
mpaign to overthrow our king. His fellow catascope, Ward “Wart” Burton, who’d been our mentor when we’d joined Zygan Intelligence as newbies, had gone undercover in Benedict’s guerilla ranks to try to foil the traitor’s plans. I could only hope that John had been doing the same thing, playing a double agent seeming to cooperate with Benedict to gain his trust. I prayed that my beloved brother wasn’t instead a misguided catascope who’d been “turned” by Benedict’s villainous charm.
“I think John was one of Benedict’s test pilots for the trip to another dimension,” I explained. “He seemed to be wrapped in a Golden Fleece when he disappeared in that flash of energy and light. And, unlike the other ‘test pilots’ Benedict sacrificed, John wasn’t blown back to our dimension.”
Benedict and his minions had repeatedly attempted to transition--without success--to another brane for years during and after his exile. His previous cross-dimensional intrusions had thrown all his unlucky ‘test pilots’ back to our universe, most severely injured—or dead. But the Golden Fleece John was wearing, the Somalderis, might have been able to draw enough energy from our sun to fuel a successful inter-dimensional crossing to a universe beyond ours. Perhaps even as far as the elusive Level Three, the heaven that Zygans were promised would be their final reward.
“With—“ I choked on my former classmate’s name, “Nephil Stratum as his Somalderis, Benedict was able to travel to another dimension. That means there’s a good chance John made it, too. And if he did, he could’ve landed in enemy territory. What if he’s a prisoner?” I badgered Spud. “What if he was hurt? No way I’m standing by and letting him die. We have to mount a rescue.”