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Post by James on Jul 1, 2012 21:43:44 GMT -5
Tina Nettleson ran down the grassy road that was flanked by the two rows of houses. The tarmac that had been allocated for the Governmental Street had yet to reach the Engineers’ Road. It was a fact of life that Tina had learnt since she was the age of four, when her curly blonde hair first began to straighten and darken. Ten years later, she had known for a long time that all her friends that had parents working in the Mayor’s House or the Court always got things first: access to the fresh water, a proper road, an increased allowance in energy consumption. Eventually, it would trickle down to the engineers and the farmers but only after the civil servants had dragged it out for as long as possible.
It was one of the reasons why she was so determined to pass her exams and move to the next road. Helen Trott wouldn’t make a good Mayor and Oliver Kerr would be a horrible judge. She would be better. She was going to be better. All she had to do was pass her History Exam. If she remembered when paraterraforming began and when the colony was granted its first charter then she would finish top of her class. Tina smiled as she thought of the faces Helen would pull in the Grade Ceremony.
Moving pass the outskirt of the town, lanky three-story houses surrounded by small fields of livestock, Tina stood under one of the massive steel towers. Threateningly dark clouds obscured her view of the town’s roof, the tower disappearing behind the thick woolly pillows. Just beyond the massive structure waited the Red Zone, the sandy planes swirling in their dance of death. It wouldn’t be long until even the Red Zone changed to grass and rivers and a new ship of colonisers would arrive. Tina hoped that more young girls and boys would be on the ship, especially boys.
“Tina, what are you doing here?” her father said, stepping out of the elevator within the tower itself. His toolbox was wrapped around his lean waist. Rations made sure it was impossible to become overweight like those that lived on Aris.
“I thought I would walk you home,” she beamed, giving him a quick hug.
Not a second passed after she pulled her arms away from her father before Tina’s eyes slammed shut from the beam of light that flashed around. Heavy footsteps encircled her, her eyes opening to see a rush of armed men run towards her town. Another group swung their weapons around and a flash of red arched through the air and narrowly missed her ear, burning a hole straight through the steel skin of the tower behind her. It was like nothing she had seen before. It was as if their guns fired the laser that her father’s favourite tool used to cut small surgical patches to repair wires and faulty electrics. Before Tina could even consider running, her father flinging out his arms in front of her; she felt a burst of intense heat burn away at her chest and she tumbled to the ground. Somewhere her father screamed and then she heard him fall too, her eyes clamped shut in fear of what she might see.
“Right, get those two out of the way and then knock this tower down. Nothing can survive this attack,” a voice said as a pair of hands wrapped themselves around Tina’s arm. Her head bumped along the ground, a welcome relief from the pain in her chest and then Tina felt everything slip away. Silence reigned.
***
“Captain Underwood,” a voice boomed from the other side of the hall. “Just the woman I was hoping to see!”
Captain Penelope Underwood, formerly of the 4th Worm Division, clamed her lips shut to avoid the sigh escaping from her throat. She already longed to leave the reception in honour of Kratos Michaels’ return to the Overseer Council; she most definitely didn’t want to spend a moment talking to the man. Unfortunately, she had nowhere to run to. The Aris Empire spared no expense when it came to its home planet and namesake, especially when the capital was in question. The city hall was wide and spacious. Glass walls towered up and shot down; and below, the whole of the city and the countryside beyond was visible to the elites of society that came to party. The Goem Tower was the tallest of all in the city. Penelope contemplated disappearing into the crowd, but her military garb would betray her in a second. Damn the General that decided to expose her to one more social outing before granting her retirement.
“Captain Underwood, how are you?” a tall, clean cut man asked as he took her hand and shook it vigorously. His suit seemed to fade between different hues of grey depending on where he stood in the room.
“Fine,” Penelope grunted, trying to avoid Michaels’ nauseatingly white teeth. His hand felt stone cold against the flesh of her own palm, the one sign that the Kratos had actually gotten his hands dirty in the Time War. Or blown off at least.
He dropped her hand and gestured away from a throng of people, towards an alcove in the glass. “Is there anything I can do for you, Captain? I’m very indebted to the military for backing my re-election to the council. In fact, I’ve noticed a lot of my old comrades are joining me. I suppose after such a glorious victory, they can demand anything.”
“I try to stay away from the politics, Kratos,” Penelope said, looking away from him.
She couldn’t deny he was right, though. Everywhere she looked was a celebrity from the war. The privates and lieutenants that had actually won the war were not present, no; they had been thrown back into civilian life only a moment after what was left of the Genesis Grouping unconditionally surrendered. However, generals and commanders mingled with socialites and politicians, trading military regalia for fine, sleek clothing. The enhancements that were crucial to winning the war were fading from view with every passing day as well. Even Penelope had removed the lens from her eye, which granted her a wealth of information on the health and direction of history. It wasn’t a necessity anymore. She didn’t feel the need, though, to replace it with a social model that granted her the age, profession and appropriate appealing measurements of the person she was staring at.
“I can see that,” Michaels laughed, drawing her attention back to him. “In smart military dress, your medals pinned to your chest in a giant ‘fuck off’ sign. You’re not subtle about it, Underwood.”
Penelope glowered at him, trying to look for some escape route from the conversation. “Look, I should really get going, Kratos. I need to get back home…”
“To plan for your retirement?” the Kratos said, blinding half the inhabitants of the room as he smiled. “I’ve heard that this is your last engagement. How ever will you pass the time without the military, pardon the pun? I suppose the pensions are so generous now that you can easily afford a supra-five hundred. You might even be able to get a place above the clouds, I know some people that might help.”
“I was actually thinking of maybe going into farming out in the Green Sea.”
“Won’t be able to do that,” Michaels replied. “The ban upon inter-travel between the cities and the Sea is still in place. The RailBullets aren’t even stopping at the platforms anymore except from those within cities boundary. No, Penelope, you get yourself a nice apartment as high as you can afford. You’ve earned it.”
Not responding, Penelope cursed her timing. If she had made it out of the city when she first asked to be relieved, the Green Sea would have been opened to her. Even though the electrical charges had gone up around the cities, they were still ways to make it into the largely unblemished countryside just out of reach. The RailBullets were her best bet and now she had no foreseeable chance of using them as well. Unless, she was willing to risk everything on the back of a lone hunch and half a garbled radio message that had floated out from her comms-unit several months ago.
Reaching for a small fish, a rare delicacy across the empire, from a nearby waiter, Michaels swallowed it down whole before continuing. “And you still haven’t answered my question, Captain. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I mean, there’s been a lot of changes that happened when we were in the Bubble,” the Kratos said, falling over his words. Penelope had never seen the ever-oiled fighter turned politician stammer before. “You haven’t had any changes that have affected you in a particularly distressing way? There are places such a distinguished war hero can go if there was. And no matter what people might say about me, I care about my fellow citizens. Especially the ones that have a say in my continue presence on the Council.”
“No, there were no changes, really. My apartment was arranged a little differently when I got back, I suppose. I wouldn’t really call that distressing, I thought everyone would have to face those little changes,” Penelope answered.
“True, true,” Michaels said, waving his hand away as if he was ridding himself of an irksome creature. “Little changes, nothing you can’t handle on your own, obviously. Well, I should mingle some more. I hope to see you again soon. Who knows, maybe you might have a run at succeeding me?”
The Kratos didn’t wait for an answer, disappearing back into the heaving mass of people within the hall. Penelope was hardly listening to his prattle, her eyes locked onto the city below. The streets were too far away to see in any detail, but she could see the occasional flash of movement atop the roofs of other, smaller towers. Wondering what Kratos Michaels had meant about distressing changes, Penelope decided to slip away from the hall while she still had the chance.
***
Moving pass the outskirt of the town, lanky three-story houses surrounded by small fields of livestock, Tina stood under one of the massive steel towers. Threateningly dark clouds obscured her view of the town’s roof, the tower disappearing behind the thick woolly pillows. Just beyond the massive structure waited the Red Zone, the sandy planes swirling in their dance of death. It wouldn’t be long until even the Red Zone changed to grass and rivers and a new ship of colonisers would arrive. Tina hoped that more young girls and boys would be on the ship, especially boys.
“Tina, what are you doing here?” her father said, stepping out of the elevator within the tower itself. His toolbox was wrapped around his lean waist. Rations made sure it was impossible to become overweight like those that lived on Aris.
Tina’s reply never made it free from her mouth, her lips opening as a pair of armoured monsters leapt from the long grass and barrelled both Tina and her father to the ground. Screaming for just a second, a hand was clamped against her face and Tina realised that she wasn’t being pinned down by a monster, but rather a young woman who was covered in light, metallic body armour. Only her eyes were visible, a small glass visor revealing two orbs of green that made the little girl relax against her captor. The eyes seemed so kind.
“Shut up, sir,” a male voice said beside her, an armoured man wrestling with her father. “Please, stay still or you’ll die.”
Before her father could spit out a reply, a light exploded within the middle of the field and Tina slammed her eyelids closed. All around her she could hear the thundering of heavy footsteps. Eyes still tightly shut, her ears pricked at the sound of the softly spoken wind. It took Tina several seconds to realise she was actually listening to the woman above her whisper out hurried instructions. She was telling them to wait and yet Tina didn’t think she was the one being ordered. Somewhere above them a man was yelling out commands, shouting that the tower next to them needed to be destroyed. Tina could feel her father start to struggle against his captor again.
“Now,” the woman beside her ordered.
There was a moment of stillness and then Tina’s eyes flew open, the sky flashing blood red as a roar of sound rose over them. Every second she could spy a spurt of crimson fly over her head, like a tiny shooting star. People began to scream and groan in pain and Tina felt scared again, wishing that she could find the kind eyes of the woman beside her. Her captor, though, had leapt up from the grass and wheeled her gun around at some unseen foe.
“Run!” a voice yelled, the armoured man rolling Tina’s father into her. “Take your girl and get back into the town, stay indoors.”
Tina gasped as she caught sight of the man’s eyes that sat behind the visor. One was bright blue, normal and swivelling as he leapt to his feet. However, the second was metallic, a red flashing dot blinking menacingly where the pupil should have waited. Tina wanted to see more, almost jumping to her feet, before her father’s arm had wrapped around her spindly form, plucked her from the ground and sprinted away from the noise, lights and chaos.
***
“Anything to declare?” the machine asked, Penelope’s face resting on a stand in front of the screen. A thin metal band ran from the machine, wrapping itself around her wrist.
“No,” Penelope replied, a heat running down the length of her face as she spoke. She hated scanners.
“Answer accepted,” the machine droned. “Are you carrying a concealed weapon of any sort?”
“No.”
“Answer accepted. Do you intend on doing anything to hinder the journey of the RailBullet?”
“I do not,” Penelope said.
“Answer accepted,” the machine replied in the same tone as ever. “Please move forward and abroad the RailBullet-142 to Oppom.”
Breathing a sign of relief, Penelope pulled her hand free from its metal prison and slipped through the gate that stood in front of her. She never understood the Aris Local Rule’s affinity for using scanning machine as their last line of defence. A child could beat one of the machine’s questions, let alone a grizzled veteran on a mission. Looking around at the other busy commuters, no one seemed to pay her much attention. She had traded in her second skin of military uniform for loose fitting, casual clothing. Her already practically short, brown hair was hidden away underneath an old hat. Catching a glance of herself in a passing window, she looked more like a tourist from a backwater town community than an old soldier. No wonder no one was giving her a second glance as she sat down upon one of the benches in the station. It was perfect.
The RailBullet station was crowded and overflowing. Towering, strong metal fences made sure that no one slipped off the size of the platform. If someone somehow managed to achieve it, they would fall a hundred feet to their death. The station was located on top of an average sized building on the outskirts of the capital. For most of the day, it lounged in the shadows of the taller buildings that hung like protective older brothers. Occasionally, though, light would break through from another angle and the busy commuters would rush to wait in the comfort of one of the various shade stands around the station. Running in every direction away from the city were the tracks that the RailBullets ran on, hanging suspended in midair as if by magic.
Magic, it was most certainly not. Small, almost undetectable, cables ran from one platform to the next. While light and tiny, they were incredibly strong and unyielding, and were able to hold up not only the tracks themselves, but also the compartments that would shoot back and forth along them propelled by high-powered engines. It was the pinnacle of human engineering on Aris. It allowed swift, transcontinental travel, while also keeping the surface of the planet devoid of vehicles and freeing up more room for farmers to supply society with food and other crucial necessities. Even Penelope found herself impressed with the engineering.
“When the stars of the night sky twinkle,” a man said, dropping into the seat beside her. “It is because we are still alive to see the past.”
“A wonderful thought,” Penelope replied, taking the bag that the man had slid across to her.
The man stared hard at her, as if he was trying to burn the image of her into his mind before speaking. “It will go off in the middle of the Green Sea. It will give you enough time to escape the vehicle before anyone can reach you.”
“Thank you,” Penelope said, heaving the bag around her shoulder and walking away without a single glance back. She didn’t want to see the man again. Already, her conscience, which had been preconditioned by years of military training, was screaming at her. Consorting with terrorists wasn’t something that respectable members of society did. Yet, Penelope had no choice. Something was going on down in the Green Sea and they were the only people who could help her descend into it.
Stepping onto the RailBullet that rested idly against the platform, Penelope moved down two sets of carriages, each of them possessing two stretching sofas that ran from one end of the compartment to the other. Sliding through another door, she slipped into one of the toilets and locked the door with a push of her thumb. Penelope swung the bag up onto the sink and unzipped it in a second, her eyes searching into the darkness for its contents. She saw the gun immediately. It was old, small and compact, nothing more than a baby pistol. Her fingers running over the cool metal with a certain sense of amazement, Penelope realised that it still fired bullets. The terrorists had provided her with an antique. Checking the cylinders that spun around like a toy, she was at least relieved to see that it was fully loaded. Pocketing it with a certain sense of dread, she turned her attention back inside the bag.
Next to the gun was a small, workman’s tool. It would fire a thin, concentrated laser that was probably more dangerous than the gun in her back pocket. Penelope slid it beside the weapon, knowing that it was bound to come in useful later. There was only one thing left in the bag. Like everything else the terrorists had given her, it was small. Penelope knew, though, that it wouldn’t stay like that. Dropping it into a makeshift pocket in the inside of her jacket, Penelope shoved the now empty bag behind the toilet and moved back into the compartment behind her. It was already filling up with businessmen and women, relaxed teenagers and several well-known local politicians. Penelope felt a stab of guilt as she sat down upon the comfortable sofa and waited for the RailBullet to begin its journey. The terrorists had promised her that no one would die, but how well could you trust someone who illegally blow things up for a living?
After several more minutes, engines roared into life and the carriages lurched out of the station. The transition from stationary to moving was only a second, several people banging elbows with the person next to them, before the vehicle began to smoothly race along the tracks that sat waiting beneath it. The people that waited for other RailBullets soon turned into dots upon the horizon and then disappeared from sight completely. Penelope’s usual steely stomach began to churn and bubble as she listened to commuters share stories and jokes. Several of them commented on the beauty of the Green Sea and even more completely ignored their surrounding. Penelope wanted to scream out some warning to them as the compartment became warmer and warmer.
Twenty minutes later, Penelope’s heart dropped as the machine lifted itself free of the tracks before slamming back down onto them hard, bodies flying upwards off the sofas that ran on either side. Somewhere flames licked at the windows, a surge of heat rushing through the compartment as people screamed. Throwing out her hands, Penelope narrowly avoided her face smashing onto the surgically clean, metal floor. The sound of crying and hurried shouts blended with the cocktail of screams and stampeding feet. All around Penelope were other stunned bodies, several of them rubbing at wrists or grimacing as they lay upon the floor. She knew she had to act fast.
Crawling along the metal floor, occasionally offering a comforting touch upon to several confused teenagers that were around her, Penelope made her way to the doors. They would enter into a lockdown upon any signs that the RailBullet had entered into difficulties, which was precisely why the terrorist had given Penelope a laser. Reaching into her back pocket, as her eyes flickered between the two doors leading to other carriages; Penelope pulled loose the laser and pressed down onto the switch. It activated instantly, a thick red line cutting into the metal of the door that stood in front of her. The alarm system blasted out its treacherous ringing a second later.
“Come on, come on,” Penelope whispered under her breath, the words barely reaching her ears as people continued to yell and the alarms rung steadily louder. Apparently, no one noticed the woman lying on her stomach, slowly cutting away into the door.
Thankfully, the laser made short work of the metal it battled with. Sweat began to drip down Penelope’s nose, her heart thumping as loud as the alarms blared. The guards would know where the breach was. She had a matter of seconds. Somewhere behind her, people started yelling at Penelope, but her ears didn’t want to translate the sound into words. With a sigh of triumphant, the laser completed its circuit and the door-within-a-door fell away, a rush of refreshingly cool air filling the compartment.
“Do not move a muscle,” a voice yelled. Penelope’s body froze as something hard pressed into her back. “Drop the laser and stand up slowly. And I mean, really slowly.”
A clunk echoed far louder than should have been possible, the tool dropping to the ground as Penelope slowly rose to her feet. A man, dressed in blue overalls, was pointing a gun at her chest. Scanning the various sections of the weapon, Penelope filed it away as a heat blasting rifle; meant to incapacitate through pain, not kill. She could risk it. She followed the guard’s continued orders, slowly moving her hands to behind her head. Fingers brushed against the back of her hat and then fell away as Penelope dropped her hand to her back pocket, the gun spiralling upwards before the guard could even react. A flash of metal flew from the end of the barrel and embedded itself within the man’s shoulder, blood spurting from the wound. It splashed across her face, her stomach curdling at the sensations of the unusually warm liquid. Veteran of the most vicious war in centuries, Penelope wasn’t used to blood splashing out across her face.
“Stay still,” Penelope said, yanking violently free the gun from the man’s hand as he fell to the floor with her spare hand. “And you’ll live.”
Already, she could spy several more guards racing into the compartments with their guns raised. Her heart didn’t raise a beat. Dropping the pistol back into its home in her back pocket and flinging the rifle’s strap over her shoulder, Penelope yanked the small rectangular strip of fabric from her jacket and hurled herself from the makeshift door. She heard screams fly out with her through the doors and then the wind filled her ears, the fabric spreading outward against its force. The cool air liberated her from the oppressive heat of the compartment, her spirit soaring momentarily alongside her body. Her arms grew further apart above her head as Penelope clung onto the tiny glider, flying through the air and towards the thick trees and rolling fields of the Green Sea.
***
“ETA, fifteen minutes,” Captain Penelope Underwood said, whispering into her comms unit. If she looked closely, she could see the glistening of her battalion’s scopes within the long grass.
Beside her, Lieutenant Pompeii Williams laid with his elbow digging steadily deeper in the dirt. “I suppose after three months, fifteen minutes isn’t too long to wait.”
Penelope decided not to remind Lieutenant Pompeii about one of their first mission where they had spent a year waiting in the cold, near deserted moon of Luun. The technology of their mobile base had been primitive back then, barely enough food to last in the freezing, year-long winter that they endured. Now, it was far better. The large mobile base, resting upon the edge of the Red Zone of the planet, was decked out in high-tech entertainment and supplies to last a decade. As the last few months had proved, where it sat out of sight in the swirling sand storms of the Red Zone, it could survive in the most inhospitable of territories. Penelope was glad, though, she had never had to live longer than a year outside of her own time stream. She didn’t want to test the capabilities of the fortress that had been her home for so long already.
That was the problem of the Aris Empire’s time travel capabilities; it was centred in the Bubble, which drifted through deep space away from the war that raged across dimensions, shielding its army away from the changes in the time stream. It made sure that no matter what might happen, the whole of the Aris Empire’s military wouldn’t disappear in the blink of an eye. Within the massive, metal structure were housed hundreds of wormholes that led back to certain points of time, the intervals growing shorter with each passing hole. Many were in awed at the concept that by stepping into the wormhole they could travel back hundred of years into the past. Penelope was under no such amazement; she considered the technology in purely military terms. And in military terms, the Bubble meant one thing: limited mobility. If their time stream was attacked at one point, they would have to go through the nearest approximate wormhole and wait. Even in the past, people still aged.
The Genesis Grouping had no such problems. Penelope found herself gritting her teeth at the thought. No one on Aris or any of the other planetary systems quite understood how the Grouping’s technology worked. They had the ability to appear almost anywhere in time, popping up centuries ago for a second, causing havoc and then disappearing again as quickly as possible. They were guerrilla fighters in the time stream. The Aris Empire easily outnumbered them, but the Grouping could launch numerous attacks swiftly, which meant Penelope was always playing defence. The Grouping, weaker in every sense of the word, was trying to destroy the Aris Empire through its past. If they destroyed the colony on this planet, then centuries later, the Empire would be missing its largest breadbasket. Crippled and weakened in the blink of an eye. And that wasn’t even considering the numerous other causation problems which would occur throughout the intervening years.
“Remember,” Penelope whispered to her division. “Do not let them destroy a single tower; it’s crucial that the paraterraforming continue.”
A series of ‘affirmatives’ rung out in her ear, before Lieutenant Pompeii muttered ‘roger’ under his breath. She considering kicking him with her left foot, but the red numbers counting down in front of her right eye were descending into the seconds and there was no point needlessly moving so close to the goal. Sixty flashed up in front of her. Penelope shifted her weight, letting her fingers coil around the trigger of her rifle like the smallest of exotic garden snakes. Fifty. The gun slowly rotated on the earth, clearing out a miniature trench for the base of the weapon to slide quickly through in the battle. Forty. She cleared out her mind of any lingering thoughts, concentrating solely on the metal in her hands.
“Damn it, what are those two doing?” Lieutenant Pompeii growled.
Eyes shooting up, Penelope saw the small girl and her father standing in the shadows of one of the towers. Cursing silently, a thirty flashing in front of her eye, Penelope leapt to her feet and charged forward. Grass bristled behind her as Lieutenant Pompeii followed. Even if they stopped the Genesis Grouping’s prime objective, their enemies could still cause havoc by killing one person before their natural death. The ripples in time could extend out across centuries. Tackling the girl, as gently as Penelope could manage, to the ground, she heard her two other bodies hit the grass beside her. Lieutenant Pompeii muttered several angry words to the father as Penelope stared hard into the girl’s eyes, trying to offer an explanation in just a glance.
It worked, the girl ending her fidgeting just as the unmistakable blinding light of the Grouping’s time technology enveloped around them. Her face hidden in the long grass, Penelope counted the pairs of feet that stood all around her. There couldn’t have been anymore than twenty soldiers stood around her. They had waited like a snail for months in their metal shell. The battle would be over in minutes. Whispering instruction to her men and women, her voice barely carrying above the wind, Penelope waited.
“Right, knock this tower down and then move onto the next. Nothing can survive this attack,” a man said, almost directly above Penelope.
“Now!” she ordered, leaping to her feet.
The man in front of her, her opposite number, stumbled backwards at her sudden appearance. They were only metres apart. Swinging the butt of her rifle around, she caught him in the face. There was a sickening shattering of glass as his visor gave way from the blow and the man fell to the floor. Even through her armour, she could feel the heat of the lasers that flew past her ears, striking down the enemy all around her. They were unprepared and ill-trained, the Genesis Grouping just as pathetic as ever. Catching a man squarely in the chest with a sustained bout from her rifle, Penelope watched coldly as he fell to the floor, a feeble grunt escaping his lips. Somewhere behind her Lieutenant Pompeii was ordering the civilians to run, but it was pointless. They had already won.
***
Consulting the electronic pad in front of her, Penelope looked at the two flashing yellow lights upon the screen. One was the pad itself, its reading appearing upon its own screen. The other was the origin of a radio message that had valiantly struggled to transmit itself through a series of old satellites. Only two words had reached Penelope old military communication unit, which still sat next to her bedside cabinet in her apartment. Two words that sent a chill down her spine as she sprinted from the kitchen to her bedroom.
Help. Pompeii.
Hearing the humming of an engine somewhere above, Penelope flattened herself against a tall tree, its thick leaves covering her from sight. After leaving the Bubble, Penelope had lost contact with her faithful lieutenant, however, as soon as she heard the message her heart leapt to her throat. He had never asked for help before. Once, three hundred years ago, he was shot clean through his thigh. Even as he crawled back to the base, he never distracted anyone once about asking for aid. Pompeii Williams was asking for help now, though, and that chilled Penelope to the bone.
She covered her eyes as the light began to flood between the trees, the floating jeeps circling above her, looking for the fugitive that had leapt from the RailBullet. They would probably never suspect that it was former military; undoubtedly they would chalk it down to terrorists and leave it at that. Penelope took comfort in the fact she would be able to return freely to life back within the city after hunting down Pompeii. After all, depending on what Pompeii needed, she might have to.
Consulting the pad in front of her, the dots no more than a mile apart, Penelope waited as the lights grew dimmer and dimmer. Minutes passed and soon the darkness of night returned, leaving her alone with her thoughts within the small forest in the Green Sea. Most of the sea was level and cleared farmland, but the occasionally hilly grouping or thick forest would crop up between large manor homes. It wasn’t for any environmental reason. The rich landowners merely believed that forests and hills were more aesthetically pleasing than fences as boundary markers.
Setting off between the trees that towered around her, Penelope flicked on the torch that sat atop the heat blasting rifle she had stolen from the guard abroad the RailBullet. Twilight was setting in around them, darkness beginning to claw at her surrounding as trees slowly gave away to the rolling green fields that the Green Sea was famous for. If the jeeps returned she would have no escape, she would be a sitting duck. However, Penelope had no choice. She had to keep moving and find either Pompeii or the machine that had created the radio message.
The light from her gun was weak, barely showing her the ground that sat two steps in front of her. It would probably be enough to alert the sweeping jeeps above her, though. Turning the torch back off, Penelope moved cautiously across the ground. Even the flattest of terrain could still leave you spread across the floor if you weren’t careful. In the meagre light, her breath beginning to cloud in front of her, a structure rose out from the ground. Several storeys high and stretching almost as wide as an old cricket pitch, the building looked as if it could be blown over by a strong breeze. The walls frequently changed colour, the centre being made of brick before giving way to uneven panels of woods and sickening, pastel plaster. One of the newest extensions looked as if a massive conservatory had been dropped on the edge of the building, the occasional sparkle of light glistening from the glass. Penelope consulted her electronic pad once more, her head shaking side to side. She couldn’t understand what Pompeii would be doing in such a place.
Hearing the whirring of jeep motors above, Penelope moved swiftly and steadily, covering the ground between her and the house in mere minutes. Her heart raced with every flash of light above her until grass turned to gravel, crunching agonisingly loudly under her shoes, and a plain, wooden door stood in front of her. Steadying her breathing, the gun slung once more over her shoulder, she waited several seconds before rapping her fist against the door. She waited. Goosebumps spread down her exposed skin and she struck the door again. Someone had to be living in a house this big; there was no way that the ruling Local Authority would allow such an area of land to fall into disuse. She once had a grand-uncle died without leaving his tiny farm to an heir. The Local Authority had annexed the area within a week.
Suddenly there was a noise, wood scraping against wood, and the door swung open to reveal a portly, little man. Penelope didn’t flinch at the empty eye socket. Or the tuft of hair that sat atop his head. She greeted him and the man continued to stare with his single green eye, his lips slightly parted. In the darkness, Penelope could still see the cracks and blisters upon the thin strips of flesh.
“Good evening,” Penelope repeated. “I’m Captain Penelope Underwood.”
The man’s face stirred into life, muscles straining to work, as several teeth emerged to form an uneven grin. “Captain Underwood? Yes, yes, we’ve been expecting you,” he said, grabbing her arm. His grip was as strong as an iron enforced door. “This way, Captain Underwood, yes, this way.”
Penelope shuddered at the thin, long fingers that wrapped around her jacket, but allowed him to pull her over the threshold. Somewhere behind her the jeeps were searching for her and somewhere in the building, Pompeii had to be waiting. The man was leading her down a long corridors, tiny orbs of light occasionally peaking out from between tiny slithers of space in the various doors that they passed by. Penelope started, the man’s grip doubling around her, when she realised that she was seeing eyes stare out at her. Some orbs came in pairs, and some were solitary, while occasionally a mechanical red dot would blink on and off. She was vaguely aware that her fingers were at the risk of losing circulation.
“Nikolas, what are you doing?” a voice called out, a man stepping out into the hallway.
“Captain Underwood, yes, she needs to be taken to Pompeii, yes, yes,” the man called Nikolas replied, dropping Penelope’s arm as he spoke.
Wrapped in a long white’s coat, the man who had appeared within the corridor seemed perfectly normal. His teeth were relatively straight, his skin nowhere near as patchy as Nikolas’s. “You must apologise for Nikolas’s behaviour, Captain, he has taken to the role as a doorman with an almost vicious sense of determination.”
“It’s fine,” Penelope said, rubbing at her arm. “I don’t mean to intrude without warning, but I’ve come to see Pompeii Williams.”
“Yes, Pompeii informed me that he wanted to send you a message, I didn’t think it was a great idea, but I couldn’t refuse him,” the man said, offering his hand. “Doctor Ulysses Collier, 3rd Medical Field Unit.”
Penelope took his hand, feeling the callousness around his fingers. “You fought in the war?”
“I fought in several wars,” Doctor Collier replied. “I saw the border dispute on the second moon of Kharton. I watched the first flicker of conflict between Aris and Genesis. But all due to that war, yes. I won’t bore you, though, you came to see Pompeii and I think you should come and see him quickly.”
Ulysses Collier turned and stepped through an open door, gesturing for Penelope to follow. She licked at her lips, pushing salvia around her dry mouth. She didn’t like the way the Doctor had spoken about Pompeii, the moisture in her mouth had all left her mouth at the word ‘quickly’. Stepping through the door, Penelope was unsure where to look as she saw bodies of varying levels of undress around her. Her eyes dropped to her feet. Scraps of military garb were folded neatly across the wooden floor, sitting sadly at the end of the long narrow beds that ran the length of the room she had stepped into. Lifting her eyes, she spied a middle aged woman alone in a bed, spluttering into a bloodied sheet.
“Doctor? Who are all these people?” Penelope asked, softer than she had meant. She wondered if her words had even reached his ears.
“These people? They’re the physically wounded,” the Doctor replied simply. “And a few of the people who are suffering mechanical failures. You might have noticed the glass room we have? That’s for recharging, a lot of the old tech used solar power before the war so we try and keep people’s enhancements working as best we can.”
Penelope’s head turned, the smell of dried sweat, blood and vomit assaulting her nostril in a sickening cocktail. Several of the men trying to dress themselves were missing limbs and even more had metallic arms and hands hanging limply by their side. “I don’t understand,” she said, turning her attention back to the Doctor. “What is this place?”
“I think to call this place a hospital would be a kindness,” the Doctor replied, a smile that didn’t quite reached his eyes drawn across his face. “I suppose a refugee base might be more fitting.”
“But why are they’re not in hospitals in the capital?”
“You don’t know a thing, do you?” the Doctor asked, spinning on his feet. “I knew they were keeping this secret, I’ve been threatened as much that I’m tolerated as long as I don’t say a word… but still, I thought some people would know.”
Wanting to reply, the Doctor disappeared before Penelope could open her mouth. His body disappeared behind another door; a door, which only consisted of an empty doorframe and a long strip of green fabric. Casting a fugitive glance back, the eyes of two broken, wheezing women locked onto her, Penelope sucked in a closed, stale breath of air and pushed the fabric out of her way as she stepped through. Blackness rushed around her, swallowing her before objects slowly began to take shape in the darkness.
The shadow of the Doctor stood to one side, as still as if he was being hunted. Beside him, stains still visible on the sheets, laid four beds, reflecting another four that sat across the room. Groans of pain mingled with the whirring of machines, mechanic pumps sprinting up and down as wires ran down from the contraptions and into the arms of the patients. Penelope took in the drawn, sagging faces of the people around her before her stomach dropped to the floor. Lying stretched out on the third bed to the left, heavy shadows stalking underneath his eyes as he breathed shallowly, Pompeii Williams sunk deeper into the bed. His blue, natural eyes stared deeply at her, a hint of a smile flickering briefly across his face. The enhancement that his right eye, though, that had served him faithfully through the war hung from the socket of Pompeii’s eyes, connected by a few loose wires.
“Sorry for the darkness,” Ulysses Collier said, stepping back to the makeshift door. “But all of them are highly susceptible to light at the moment. Their bodies are rejecting the eye-components, I’ve tried to remove them but I’m afraid I’ll even do more damage. Obviously, there are no manuals for me to follow so all I have is my memory, which isn’t up to the task. But I’ll leave you two to talk; I think everyone else is asleep.”
Once again, Penelope was left with a question hanging from her lips as the Doctor disappeared from the view. Why didn’t he have manuals for surgery? Penelope had seen it happened before the war. Her mind allowed herself a moment of thought before the question was shunted away, her feet carrying her quickly to the edge of Pompeii’s bed. Standing so close to him, she could see the sweat that shone on his skin and the shallow compressions of his torso as his lungs seemed to valiantly struggle to fill themselves with oxygen. The smile, though, that had appeared on his face had return, slowly reaching his eyes.
“Good to see you again, Captain,” Pompeii croaked, sitting up somewhat as he reached clumsily for the water on a table beside him.
Penelope gave a little chuckle, coming out more as a hiccough than anything. “I think we can dispense with ranks, Lieutenant.”
“There’s no point, Captain,” Pompeii said, sipping gingerly at the glass of water. “I figure I’ll call you Captain for the rest of my life. I reckon I’ve still got some time left in me yet. The message got through okay then? I spent hours trying to ping it around off satellites.”
“Yeah, it came through. Look, Pompeii, what are you doing here?” Penelope asked, sitting carefully on the end of the bed. The cacophony of sickness and scientific advancement still called out all around her, but Pompeii’s laboured breathing sounded louder than all. The strong, assertive man that had fought alongside her was gone, replaced with a broken husk, slowly sweating out his fluids through every pore.
“Dying out of sight is the simple answer,” Pompeii said. “Don’t worry; I know you hate emotions, I haven’t asked you to whisper sweet words in my ears as I pass away. There’re some things you don’t understand, Captain. Some things that you need to know. The war changed things. And I don’t mean little things like finding that your favourite book now never existed.”
Penelope considered his words, thinking about what Kratos Michaels had said to her within the towering home of the Local Authority. He had asked whether she had experienced any change. She hadn’t, of course. When the Genesis Grouping had finally been decisively beaten, the Aris Empire had sent in surgeons to try and mend the time stream to the best of their abilities.
“Don’t interrupt,” Pompeii said, lifting his hand up. “I can see it in your eyes, you’re about to start asking questions. Please, Penelope, just let me explain the best that I can. Ulysses can answer your questions later.”
She was so surprised at the use of her first name that Penelope fell silent as Pompeii began to speak. “No matter what the Overseer Council tried to organise, they were going to be changes to history and the present. We all knew that. It wasn’t much of a problem, though, right? Because it all works it way out in the end, doesn’t it? People might end up in different parts of the planet, or even on another planet. But they don’t have a memory of their previous life because it never existed, it never happened, all they remember is their new life. It’s actually quite brilliant.”
“I know how time travel works,” Penelope interjected.
“Do you?” Pompeii said, his single blue eyes holding her stare as tight as the strange doorman clung to her arm. “What about the people in the Bubble? What happens to them? We were kept immune from the changes in the time stream. You can’t have your army disappearing just because a planet ceased to be colonised in the past.”
Looking at the prone figures upon bed laid around her, Penelope swallowed down Pompeii’s words. She had never considered the fact that she could remember all the changes to her life. It was as she said to the Kratos; she could remember that her bookcase was on the opposite side of her sitting room. It had never crossed her mind that she shouldn’t remember where it once had been. Civilians would have no knowledge that the furniture had changed; they would have lived their previous life without knowledge of what once had been.
“But that means,” Penelope whispered, almost hearing cogs grind together inside her head.
“Chelsea’s married another man,” Pompeii said, his voice cracking. “My kids aren’t my kids anymore. They’re different. They look like him. My parents don’t exist. My sister has no mining company because she was never born. I’m stuck with this damn defective eye because it was never commissioned in this time stream and there are no spare parts for it. I don’t exist, Penelope. I never existed.”
Penelope could see the tears run down one side of Pompeii’s cheek, her eyes seemingly mutinying as they refused to look away from her broken lieutenant. She couldn’t imagine what he had described. It was beyond the most callous of horror writers. Her shaking hand came down to rest against his shoulder, his skin cold and clammy against her fingers. Years of training and two decades of experience accounted for nothing. Penelope had no idea what to do; she didn’t know what she could do to make it better.
“I’m going to be really selfish now, Penelope,” Pompeii croaked, looking at the wall.
Penelope squeezed the almost shrinking man’s shoulder, hoping that it translated some sort of comfort to him. “I think you of all people deserve a moment of selfishness, Pompeii.”
“You might not be saying that in a second,” he grinned, his lips thin and drawn. The muscles of his cheeks seemed to twitch constantly. “Ulysses knows that the military, well, Michaels, is trying to use you to boost public support. You’re the only one who could swing favours and gain entry to the Bubble again. Penelope, you’re the only one who can go back and blow the damn thing out of the universe.”
***
Moving pass the outskirt of the town, lanky three-story houses surrounded by small fields of livestock, Tina stood under one of the massive steel towers. Threateningly dark clouds obscured her view of the town’s roof, the tower disappearing behind the thick woolly pillows. Just beyond the massive structure waited the Red Zone, the sandy planes swirling in their dance of death. It wouldn’t be long until even the Red Zone changed to grass and rivers and a new ship of colonisers would arrive. Tina hoped that more young girls and boys would be on the ship, especially boys.
“Tina, what are you doing here?” her father said, stepping out of the elevator within the tower itself. His toolbox was wrapped around his lean waist. Rations made sure it was impossible to become overweight like those that lived on Aris.
“I thought I would walk you home,” she beamed, giving him a quick hug.
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