Off The Grid: A War with No End Book 1
Off The Grid
By Andy Nadir
Published by Andy Nadir at Amazon
Copyright 2016 Andy Nadir
Foreword
I’d like to thank my wonderful beta readers, Rena Hawethorn and Nick Frampton. You two were amazing, and I really appreciate all your help.
Chapter 1
Despair. The feeling of utter hopelessness and failure. It is the knowledge that you have no power to stop your greatest fears from occurring. Yes, I knew that feeling well. One could almost say I was best friends with the dreaded thing, since it kept coming around and I never seemed to be able to escape it.
I was feeling this particular loathsome emotion as I sat in my soft plushy swivel chair. My nonstop spinning had whipped up a powerful gale and sent my beloved card house toppling to the ground scattered it as if hit by a hurricane.
“Blast it! I was almost at three hundred cards tall! Why, God? WHY?” My eyes beheld the horrific sight in disgust, unable to grasp the atrocity. I screamed in rage, causing a nosy attendant to open my door and peek inside.
“Is everything ok in here?” he asked.
“Everything is most definitely NOT alright. My card house was just destroyed in a more heartrending event than when I hit an annoying attendant in the head with my favorite paperweight.”
He frowned and pushed his glasses up. “Sir, I do not recall any occasions when you threw a paperweight at one of the attendants. The Pisces Accords also have no record of this. Do you need medical support?”
I mentally added ‘Nobody has a sense of humor’ to my reasons of why I hated working as a scientist for the Pisces Empire. And don’t even get me started on that list. If I wrote it all down, Satan would start handing out lollipops to little kids before you finished it.
I lifted my cute little Grim Reaper paperweight and looked at it sadly. “Farewell, my wonderful friend. I’ll never forget your service to me,” I whispered reverently.
The attendant tapped his glasses, and I could faintly hear the sound of a phone ringing. “Hello, medical Team? I need immediate aid in room 7A. Its occupant appears to-”
I hurled the Grim Reaper paperweight at him and it bounced off his forehead with a heavy thud. The paperweight smashed into a million tiny pieces on the floor, and I shook my head sadly. “What a waste.”
The attendant rubbed his head. “I will be updating the Pisces accords on this matter, Mr. Jinx.”
“The horror of it all,” I grumbled.
The attendant spun, and strode angrily out of my room. I heard him smack into someone else, probably the medical Team he had called, and then muffled sounds of complaints. The attendant snapped something, and they both left. I smirked, and turned back to my flickering monitor. Just as I was about to start working, the door opened.
I groaned. “Buzz off, I was about to start working.”
“Subject has dark blonde scruffy hair and green eyes. Uniform is crumpled and covered in crumbs. There has been no error; I am speaking with Mr. Jinx. And we both know what your idea of working is. You do something mildly useful for about five minutes, and then try to beat your high score in card houses. Your current score is two hundred and fifty cards high and two hundred and fourteen wide. It was a vague replica of a fort from an older planet our empire conquered a few hundred years ago.”
The cold metallic voice washed over me like a powerful wave, and a shiver ran down my spine.
“What do you want, Rusty?” I asked.
“Look at me when you speak.” The voice growled.
Sighing, I spun my chair around with as much distain as one possibly could and looked at the partially metallic face. The cyborg eyed me darkly with mismatched eyes. “Drake, you continue to refuse to obey the Pisces Empire. We cannot allow you to continue disrupting the peace, you wannabe Hephaestus.”
I snarled at him, preparing to dive from my plush chair if he attacked me. Yes, there is a story behind that, and no, I will not be telling it to you today. The cyborg reached a clawed hand out and wrapped his hand around the front of my shirt. He lifted me easily from my chair. “Listen here, little man. You’ve annoyed the Council one too many times. They’ve issued a summons for you, and I’m here to make sure you don’t squirrel out of this one.”
Oh goody. Almost everyone the Council sent for went missing. Everyone who didn’t disappear ended up floating face down in a river somewhere.
“Can I pack my things first?” I asked, and tried vainly to wiggle out of his grip.
The cyborg glared at me, “No.”
He begun dragging me towards the door, so I reached out and grabbed the first thing I could see- a deadly weapon indeed. My hands wrapped around its hilt just as I was dragged out of the door, and I looked at my weapon. Within my hands rested a half-eaten sausage. I sighed. Why did I ever put the sausage next to where I kept my prototype energy swords?
Rusty lifted me above his head with the metal arm. He shook me around a little for good measure, and threw me on the ground. “Will you walk on your own, or do I have to carry you there like a baby?” he snarled.
In response, I hurled the sausage at him. It smacked into his human eye, and he cried out. I scrambled away from him and sprinted down the hallway. I would have returned to my room to get a weapon or two, but he was standing in the way. I ran down the halls blindly, my eyes half closed and expecting to see the cyborg’s claws suddenly grab and crush the life out of me.
I took a sudden right and burst through a pair of large, wooden, double doors. Screeching comically to a stop, I found myself staring into the eyes of twelve Council members. The one directly across from me smiled and gestured for me to sit down. “I know we called you here, but I didn’t expect you to be so prompt or eager to meet with us.”
I scratched my head, trying vainly to find a way to escape the Council room without getting chopped into little bite sized pieces and getting sold as Drake-Nuggets. Hesitantly, I lowered myself into the offered chair, and looked bleakly at the Council.
Rusty suddenly burst through the doors, rage marring his features. (Namely, the human ones.) “Council, I apologize! I allowed Drake Jinx to…” He trailed off as he noticed me sitting in the middle of the room.
A Council member raised her eyebrow. “To…?”
Rusty shook his head. “My apologies, Council. I have delivered Mr. Jinx as asked of me.”
I frowned at him. “That’s a pile of crap and we know it. Don’t make me pork you in the eye again.”
“Pork him in the eye?” an interested Council member inquired.
I grinned. “Y’know. Like poke, but I stuck him in the eye with a pork sausage.”
There was a general silence, and I sighed. “You guys have no sense of humor.”
“We have things that must be done, Drake. There is no point wasting time with useless jibber-jabber. The reason we have called you here today is because, unfortunately, we need you. You are, surprisingly, one of our smartest scientists, and I believe you are looking into advancing our knowledge of how to use the Leaps in Quantized Time, correct?”
I nodded slowly. Quantized Time was an intriguing subject. Many years ago, a scientist discovered a way to ‘step’ out of the flow of time. He found that he could travel between worlds and times by using this ability, and even bring things with him. Not too much was known about this particular topic, making it the most interesting thing in the last few hundred years. The theory the scientist finally developed was that time isn’t continuous, but in little packets that ran on completely different speeds. However, there was a catch or two. The scientist discovered that he could only travel a certain amount of times; in hi
s case, 10. It is different for anyone who tries to learn the ability, and nobody knows how many times they can travel before losing the ability. Second, only one person can have the ability at any given time. And by any given time, I mean that person’s lifespan. Well, that’s the story the public of the Pisces Empire believes. The truth is the Pisces Empire has always had that power. Nobody knows how it got there, but we use it anyways. Oh, and one more thing. For some reason, nobody who has had it has ever returned to the Pisces Empire. All that ever remains are the notes and journals they take, which their successor brings back.
The Council member coughed. “Drake! Are you listening to me?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
He glared at me. “I said we are willing to give the power of Leaping to you.”
I choked on my saliva, and doubled over gasping for breath. After a few minutes of uncontrollable coughing, I managed to straighten up in my chair. If I had that power, there wouldn’t be anything I couldn’t do! “And what do I have to do to gain this power?” I asked.
The Council member grimaced. “You see, we need you to do something for us. The Pisces Empire is under attack.”
I shrugged. “So? That’s no biggie; we’ve got the strongest military force in the universe! Our army is second to none, and we have conquered hundreds of other worlds using the Leap! What do you need me for? Not that I’m complaining of course, but…”
“It’s simple. This foe is different from the others. He is slaughtering us.”
I stared at him in surprise. Ever since the Pisces Empire had risen, no foe had ever managed to beat it because of the power of traveling between time packets, also known as Leaping. We had access to technology trillions of years into the future. How could anyone ever dream to threaten the Pisces Empire, much less defeat them?
The Councilor glared at me. “Yes, yes. You can gloat later. We need you to use Leaping and get us an army. An Army so powerful that not even this new foe can stand up against us.”
I grinned. “So what you’re saying is that I get to become the Commander of what we hope to be the strongest army the universes have ever seen? What’s the catch?”
“You’re expendable. If you die, or can only get a puny army, nobody could care less. Who knows, we might even be happy. We don’t care if you get killed while doing this. You’ll probably die no matter what you do. Once you do, we’ll just send someone else.”.
“And if I refuse…?”
Rusty’s claws screeched hungrily. I gulped. “I accept.”
The female Council member clapped her hands. “Peeeerfect. This way please.” She drawled, and gestured to a door at the back of the chamber.
I walked shakily towards the door, my emotions swirling madly around in my head. I could finally get my hands on the one thing I could have never before, and through it, everything I could ever want. And the best part was that nobody could leash me! I was a free man again. The Pisces Empire had conquered my home world ten or so years ago, and this would be the first time I could ever escape from their rule. The second I got the power, I would Leap somewhere, and they would never see me again.
I wrapped my hands around the handle of the door and twisted. There was a snap, and the handle popped off. I shrugged, too happy to care, and tossed it over my shoulder. There was a metallic ping as it bounced off Rusty’s head, and I quickly reached through the hole in the door and pulled it open.
I stepped inside the room behind, and slammed it shut. The first thing I noticed about the new room was that it was pitch-black. I looked around in confusion, but I couldn’t see anything. A dull flicker of light far off in the distance drew my attention, and I made my way towards it. I soon stood over it, and stared down at the little flame seemingly floating in the sky. Instinctively, I wrapped my hands around it. There was a searing pain in my right arm, and I was hurled across the room. The darkness faded away and the face of the female Council member slowly swam into view. “Congratulations,” she whispered, and I knew nothing more.