At the mansion, he had taken on half a dozen adults by himself. He taken out two and held his own for several minutes against four. Those he was fighting had been worried enough to call for help.
“Are you like some kind of super ninja warrior?” Louise asked.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
His shoulders shook again with silent laughter. “It is a long story of love and honor and loyalty, but the simple answer is yes.”
“Oh, come on!” Louise cried. “I know you’re tired but we need to know everything we can about what’s going on. If we’d known what was going on right after our first visit to the museum, we could have stopped—stopped everything. As it was, we didn’t even get a message to our sister warning her or Windwolf.”
He laughed tiredly. “Geez, where do I even start?” He sighed out and was silent for a little while. “My people were human once. We lived in what is now China during the Warring States, over two thousand years ago. The first Wong Jin had been a wise sage that had fallen out of favor with the Flame Emperor. He and his seven loyal and brave servants became bandits, kind of like Robin Hood and his merry men, if Robin Hood had a secret cave hideout that led to another world. Over time, they gathered hundreds of poor people to them in a remote mountain village on Onihida. Then one day—” He laughed. “You have to understand, we love to tell stories about Wong Jin. It gives us hope that someday—if we’re clever—we’ll outsmart our enemies and find freedom.”
“One day…” Louise prompted him.
“One day Wong Jin and his men were out being on one of their many adventures which mostly involved stealing something and then escaping in a clever way, and they discovered Elfhome. And there, basically on the doorstep to that world, was Providence. Most men would have been frightened—and certainly Wong Jin’s men wanted to flee the dragon—but Wong Jin saw that Providence was an intelligent creature, and so engaged him in conversation.”
“The dragons had put Elfhome under edict. By the laws of his people, Providence could not travel to Elfhome but he’d lost his daughter on the world. Fearing the worse, he pleaded with Wong Jin to find his child and bring her to him. He promised to reward Wong Jin richly if he succeeded. Wong Jin accepted the challenge. Providence marked Wong Jin so his daughter would know that Wong Jin was his Chosen. To make a long, long story short, Wong Jin carefully made his way through the elves’ defenses to find where Providence’s child had been entrapped. Only he arrived too late. The elves had already shattered the child to a dozen pieces.”
Louise thought of Joy and the eleven baby dragons all still inside Dufae’s chest. She and Jillian had been so focused on saving their siblings that they hadn’t stopped to consider where the baby dragons had came from. Dufae had known that the nactka were “loaded” but did he understand that meant that each one had an intelligent creature locked inside?
“What did Wong Jin do?” Louise asked.
“He was about to return with bits and pieces of the daughter when he discovered that the elves had also created a hybrid, a dragon elf child. Assuming that Providence wanted anything related to his daughter, Wong Jin stole the child and carried her back to Onihida. Somewhere along the way, things got complicated.”
“Complicated?”
“They fell in love.” Crow Boy said this like a typical boy; that love was weird and possibly icky. “By the time they reached Onihida, Wong Jin did not want to hand her over to Providence, nor did she want to leave Wong Jin. While his men were fearful of Providence, they pledged that they would protect her with their lives.”
“So Wong Jin brought to Providence all the shattered pieces of his child, including the female dragon-elf. He reminded Providence that he had promised Wong Jin a rich reward. For his prize, Wong Jin wanted the female, and only her. They braced themselves for a fight, but Providence knew that this would happen; it was why he picked Wong Jin to be his Chosen. He gave his blessing to their marriage and promised to watch over their people as their guardian. And to Wong Jin’s seven loyal servants, Providence gave magical powers so that they could guard his daughter.”
“So Wong Jin became your king and you’re one of the knights?”
“When you give thieves magical powers you don’t get knights in shining armor, you get super ninjas.”
“Wait, if you were humans, where did all the crow stuff come from?” Jillian joined them at the table. She picked up one of the samosas and started to eat it.
“For hundreds of years, life was good. The land was rich, our neighbors were distant and we had our guardian, Providence. We had all that we needed and Earth became a place of legend for us. But then about a thousand years ago, the oni came to our valley and captured Providence. Dragons have a dual existence. Their minds and their bodies can exist separately. His spirit came to our dream crow and begged for us to kill his body. If the oni intended just to kill Providence, it would be one thing, for it would have freed his soul. What they intended, though, was to shatter him down and remake him into a weapon of war. It would have been worse than what the elves had done to his daughter. He could not allow it.”
“But—but—why kill him? Why not save him?”
“What he asked was for the blood guard to sacrifice themselves. The oni had Providence in a magical trap. The blood guard would need to fight to his side. There would be no time to free him, only time enough to strike a killing blow before they would be overwhelmed. They were a thousand against an army. It was a slaughter on both sides. The Chosen One and all of the blood guard that fought that day died. But our people succeeded at what Providence had asked; we killed him, freeing his soul.”
“A thousand lives for one?” Jillian cried. “That was a win?”
“If the oni had kept control of his soul, the damage would have been worse. They had caught other dragons and shattered them and experimented. They wanted Providence to craft basically a global living spell. It could reach for thousands of mile, affecting millions of people, guided by his soul. It would be like an intelligent nuclear bomb, programmed to seek and destroy and having no will of its own to resist its orders. As it was, they gathered my people together and experimented with just his body. They locked the survivors within one massive cage and cast one spell. Everyone was transformed; merged with crows that—that—” He trailed off, his eyes widening slightly and then he blushed and looked down. “You don’t need to hear all the gross parts. One spell and we were forever changed as a race. Providence shielded us from the worst that could have happened. Because of him, we still function as humans. Mostly. We have bird feet and we lay eggs. But we couldn’t fly. We didn’t have wings at first. Providence provided the spell for our wings.”
Dufae’s chest had contained twelve “loaded” nactka. The twins exchanged glances and shivered. Dufae had opened the box and instantly known that he had to flee with it to Earth where it was harmless, lest it fall into the wrong hands. According to Yves, Ming had it now on Elfhome.
“The dragons had tried to isolate Onihida. Keep the evil that had taken root from spreading. But they missed one pathway. The oni guessed of its existence but they couldn’t find it. Somehow they tricked the elves into finding it. As the oni started to flood their people through it to China, we got out the newborn Chosen One and all of the blood guard children that survived our enslavement. We fled to Japan and took refuge in a mountainous temple with a sect of warrior monks known as the yamabushi.”
That explained his Japanese name. Louise wondered what kind of magical powers he had. She also wondered what exactly Joy could do. If Providence could give out magical powers, what did it mean for the baby dragon?
Crow Boy lifted his head and gave Louise a desperate look. “We thought Jin Wong had sacrificed himself on the chance of finding us a new home, one where we could live free. We’ve been waiting for the mark of Providence to appear on a new Chosen. So many of the bloodline have been killed, and now the oni has the baby in their control, and because of that, Riki let himself fall into their power. At th
e hospital, though, you said that Jin’s returning. Does that mean he’s not dead?”
He wanted it to be true. Considering all that he’d been through—and what could lay ahead—it seemed cruel to tell him that she had no idea what she babbled out.
“I-I-I don’t know—” She couldn’t crush his hope. “I don’t know how he’ll return. Or when.”
“Please, can you try to do another prophecy?”
The word shocked Louise. Prophecy? Her?
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Louise said. “I don’t even remember what I said. It sounded like nonsense to me. Jillian covered my eyes.” Louise unfolded one of the napkins that came with takeout and pressed it to her face to illustrate. “And it just happened.”
“We could get an Ouija board,” Jillian grumbled. “Would make as much sense.”
Louise blushed and started to drop her hands but Crow Boy caught her wrist.
“Please. Just try.” His voice sounded husky like he was about to cry.
She took a deep breath. Just try? Try what? If she did have a magical power, so far she’d only done the equivalent of randomly changing channels on a television. What she needed was meaningful search terms to pull up what she wanted. Captain Jin Wong. The Tainlong Hao. Providence’s Chosen one. What was she thinking at the hospital? They were trying to feed the police information on Alexander being in danger…
“Brilliance strikes into the darkness!” It was like plugging into an electrical outlet: power came sure and strong. “The attack is true and the dark pathway is torn asunder! All that were trapped are free! Providence’s Child spreads his wings as he falls. He falls!”
Louise found herself on her feet, pointing toward the window.
Something streaked past, a fiery comet in the dark night.
“What the hell?” Jillian ran across the room to lean against the glass. “What is that?”
“It’s Esme!” Louise cried. “She’s trying to save Providence’s Child.”
42: PLAN B
“They say something has happened to the gate!” Nikola reported as he joined them at the window. They’d been watching a continuous storm of burning debris rain down through the night sky. “They think something hit it. They’ve lost contact with the crew that maintained it and there’s a huge debris field where it should be and where it shouldn’t be. Though I’m not sure what that means.”
“It probably means that there is debris that they can’t account for.” Louise couldn’t tear herself away from the window. “The wrong orbital plane. The wrong trajectory.”
“Like from a colony ship?” Nikola asked.
Louise shook her head. “No. It couldn’t have been a ship that hit it. Earth’s gate can only jump spaceships to Alpha Centauri Bb; the ships can’t return back through it. Even if the colonists somehow built their own hyperphase gate to return to Earth, it would be astronomically improbable that the exit point would be the same exact position as the Earth’s gate.”
“But you said Providence’s Child was falling!” Crow Boy leaned against the glass, staring up at the night sky. “You said Jin Wong was returning to us!”
She had? When she tried to recall the exact words, though, they slipped through her memory like elusive minnows, darting this way and that. It was as if even as she tried to catch hold of words, they changed as the future changed.
“Esme did say that she had to leave Earth to do something important. Maybe she was going to get Jin Wong.” For some odd reason, Jillian stared downwards toward the street instead of up at the sky.
Did it mean that Jin Wong was tumbling through space, falling to Earth, with Esme desperately trying to catch him? Try as she might, Louise couldn’t force that scenario onto the facts she knew. The colony ships couldn’t jump back to Earth. Even if they could, “debris” indicated that neither ship remained intact. Did the elusive nature of what Louise foretold mean that Esme would probably fail at her attempt to save Jin Wong?
“If the gate is gone,” Jillian said slowly as if trying to work out a difficult logic problem. “Why hasn’t Pittsburgh returned?” She pointed at the quarantine zone just a block from the hotel’s parking lot. “Shouldn’t it be right there?”
They stared at the dark Elfhome forest in silence.
* * *
Jillian chanted a litany of “This is bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Really bad. We’re totally screwed.”
“Don’t say ‘screwed.’” Louise murmured as she struggled to be calm and find a satellite that caught the accident.
“There’s nothing we can do!” Jillian cried. “Nothing. There’s huge ginormous hunks of stuff falling out of the sky that we can’t change or stop or anything.”
Louise locked down on a scream until she could say calmly, “We will find a way to deal with this. First, we need to know what exactly we’re facing.”
Within a few minutes, she found a Russian spy satellite that had been launched while the Chinese started the construction of the hyperphase gate. Over thirty years of silent observation with nothing more to report than occasional spaceships jumping to another star system. The spy satellite showed a confusion of metal pieces drifting where the gate had been. Louise scanned backwards through the satellite’s memory, watching the accident in reverse. The debris coalesced down then vanished, replaced by the gate, wreathed in violent greens and reds.
“It’s never looked like that before.” Crow Boy leaned over her shoulder. “Is that Rim fire?”
“Maybe,” Louise said. There had been no explosion, just one moment the large round gate had been there, and the next debris, all seemingly too straight to ever have been part of the circular structure.
Jillian snorted with contempt despite the fact she didn’t know any better than Louise. “Rim fire is simply an aurora effect caused by the collision of energetic charged particles in the field that holds Pittsburgh on Elfhome.”
But normally Rim fire only appeared on Elfhome. Why was it suddenly wreathing the gate? And was the debris even from the gate?
“The crew on the gate sent out a distress call,” Jillian reported on the results of her research. “They reported strong vibrations before Earth lost contact with them.”
Louise stepped back through time and gasped as the gate flickered in and out of existence. There. Gone. There again. Gone again. While the gate winked in and out, the rim fire continued to mark the gate’s location. “I don’t think anything hit the gate. I think something went wrong with the field.”
Louise scanned the footage to check her theory. Nothing seemed to interact with the gate until the last moment when the mystery debris appeared. Nor did the debris seemed to come from the gate but just flickered into existence as the gate vanished. The rim fire appeared first and then, detected only by zooming in tightly, the reported vibrations started. The aurora grew for several minutes before the gate started to blink in and out. The question was: “in and out of where?”
She locked onto the falling debris. It looked like a jigsaw puzzle thrown into the air and caught on film before raining onto the ground. Judging by the speed it flashed out of camera range, it had a vastly different orbit than the gate. It appeared only in a dozen frames of film.
Space limited the number of possible sources. It wasn’t like Earth where “machine” could run from anything airplane to mining equipment to submarine. She linked a recognition program to “known space objects” database and fed it the dozen frames of film that showed the debris.
“I don’t understand,” Crow Boy said. “The gate in orbit generated the field that kept Pittsburgh on Elfhome. If the gate is gone, what happened to the city?”
“We don’t know!” The twins and Nikola cried.
The recognition program found a match. The largest piece of debris was an odd glittering mass that looked like an iceberg growing out of a medusa of silvery tubing. The iceberg was spinning as it rocketed away. In frame number nine, it showed its smooth underbelly. There were three small ports and the start of a Chinese letter
in red. The recognition software filled in missing pieces and the ghostly outline of the colony ship Minghe Hao took shape. Part of the ship’s hull had been peeled back by some unknown collision, laying bare the water treatment plant. The ship’s vast store of water formed the glimmering iceberg blooming out the shattered remains. The constellation of smaller debris was identified as pieces of the ship’s orbital maneuvering system. Burn marks indicated that the rocket engines had been fired prior to the ship’s destruction. It would explain the speed and angle of the wreckage. But Minghe Hao had jumped out of Earth’s orbit six years ago.
Crow Boy made a small hurt sound. “I had family on the Minghe Hao.”
“Maybe Esme saved them.” Louise offered what little comfort she could. “The colony ships are massive. We’re looking at only a small section of the Minghe Hao.”
It was enough, though, to wreak havoc on Earth. The television was showing complete panic as the pieces rained down. No one else had yet identified the debris. The news was still calling it “the gate.” The Minghe Hao’s missing engines had aimed the ship at American’s heartland prior to being sheared off. Remains of the water treatment system struck the town of Bellbrook, Ohio with such force that the reporters were stating “possible nuclear weapon” to describe the destruction.
“The gate is gone!” Jillian tossed her tablet aside and began to pace around the room in long, man-length strides. She was fleeing into the character of Captain Hilts as fast as she could. “Even if the gate wasn’t what fell, it’s not in Earth space anymore. It’s probably wherever the rest of the Minghe Hao is, and that can’t be a good thing. The Minghe Hao hit something!”
Jillian was desperately trying to be strong. Now that Louise knew the signs, it was all so clear. Her twin was trying to press her lips into Hilts’ thin, confident sneer but they kept trembling. She threw herself onto the couch, trying for the soldier’s seemingly carefree slouch. “We’re not talking rush hour on the George Washington Bridge here. There’s not a lot of shit to hit in space.”