The Cypher (17 page)

How much more would he learn?

“Yeah, Gramps,” Thomas said aloud. “It’s just a little adventure.”

He put on his bracelet, Thai food and the world were waiting for him.

Or maybe not.

Tony busted through the door and threw a bundle of personal armor at him.

“Breakfast is canceled,” Tony said. “Five minutes, front door.”

Thomas checked the vest Tony had given him—it was made of interlocking plates and scales of a grey and very light plastic composite. “What’s going on?” he asked. Tony was lingering by the door, leaning against the wall.

“We think it’s a sign.” Tony smiled. “In Africa, come on!” he screamed then disappeared down the corridor.

While trying to decide which piece of armor to put on first, Thomas pressed a button on the shoulder of the suit, and after a whooshing sound, the scales lost cohesion and the whole suit fell apart, its individual scales strewn all over the floor.

Thomas sighed.

Maybe being the Cypher wasn’t going to be so little of an adventure after all.

Interlude

The First Alert

Cheyenne Mountain Directorate

North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)

June 14th, 12:01 a.m
.

Lt. Dupont tapped gently on his computer screen. He looked around at his colleagues expecting to see someone smiling at him, relishing the joke that they were playing on him, but the night shift crew was all immersed in their own work.

Ever since NORAD had consolidated its operations in Peterson Air Force Base near Colorado Springs, the famous complex built deep into the Cheyenne Mountains had become just a secondary operation. A backup, kept in “warm standby” should the need arise. Its personnel was trained to the highest standards, and considered their tour of duty more like a custodian job rather than a real frontline. A step to take before moving on to more important posts.

Dupont reclined in his seat and crinkled his brow. He was unsure if he should call attention to his station since nobody else appeared to see the blip on their screens. No alarms had been sounded, and he was hesitant to call the top brass. They all knew very well that Colonel Jessup, the man in charge of Cheyenne Mountain, was easily angered, had a reputation for being arbitrary and deeply resented his current post.    

Dupont let out a loud “Mhmmmm” for his neighbors to hear.

Thankfully, Lt. Ayala bit. She stood up from her station and walked toward him. She had more time under her belt at Cheyenne Mountain than any of the other operators, and she always displayed a little “maternal instinct” around them. The ways she wore her Air Force Uniform, always impeccable, clean and pressed, reinforced that image. “What’s up?” she asked.

“That’s up,” Dupont said as he pointed at the screen. The blip was hovering in place over the North Pole.

She leaned her elbow on the top of the monitor and smirked. “He’s six months early,” she said.

“Or six months late…” Dupont answered.

“Oh no, I was here last Christmas, he’s early.”

Since 1955, every December 24
^th
– thanks to a call from a little girl and a quick reaction by the then commanding officer Col. Harry Shoup –NORAD turns its satellites, high-powered radars, and jet fighters to track the journey of Santa Claus around the world to keep thousands of children and families informed of his whereabouts, especially if its time to go to bed and lay out cookies for him.

But not in June. Never in June.

Lt. Ayala feverishly typed and entered commands on the keyboard. The tag, SANTA 1, remained onscreen.

“Well?” Dupont was thankful that someone else was now aware of his little problem.

Ayala picked up the phone and called maintenance. “Clicker? Ayala here. Can you come? We are tracking Santa 1 on NWS… Sure… No, only one… Thanks.” She hung up the phone and turned to Dupont. “He’s coming up, don’t worry. I’m sure it’s just a glitch.” She tapped his desk with her fingers.

“Who’s Clicker?” Dupont had never even heard the name.

“Lead maintenance tech,” Ayala said. “He’s a legend around here. Some say that he’s been here since before the 50’s. That he actually dug some of the base himself.”      

“So he’s old?”

“I guess,” she hunched her shoulders. “He looks nasty and smells worse, but he’s actually very nice. Whatever your bleep is, he’ll fix it.”

“Why Clicker?” Dupont asked reclining back in his chair. SANTA 1 began to slowly drift south on his screen.

Instead of answering, Ayala cupped a hand behind her ear motioning for him to listen.

The faintest click-clack was coming from the hallway. It became louder as Clicker approached the command center. The smell of moist earth also grew in intensity, filling the room as Clicker made his entrance.

“So?” Clicker asked in a heavy, raspy voice. “What’s the problem?” He was short, about four-and-a-half feet tall, but stocky. A big head over broad shoulders and a squat body. A bulbous nose dominated his deeply wrinkled face, which was covered by a thick white-streaked beard tied in a ponytail. His coarse hair was also tied in a ponytail and the baseball cap he wore seemed ready to burst at the seams. His Air Force overalls were dirty – stained brown at the knees and elbows – and a large leather utility belt was strapped around his waist. Numerous pliers, hammers, screwdrivers, and other tools hung from the belt and a large backpack was strapped on his back.

The click-clack sound came from the tools on the belt that hit each other as he moved.

Ayala pointed at Dupont’s station. Clicker centered his gaze on Dupont.

“SANTA 1 is on the move.” Dupont pushed himself out of the way as Clicker approached his station. The smell of fresh dug earth filled Dupont’s nostrils and he fought the urge to vomit.

“What did you press?” Clicker cleaned his left ear with a fat stubby finger. Dupont could swear that he had left more dirt on his ear with that maneuver.

“Nothing. It just came online about fifteen minutes ago.”

Clicker tapped on the keyboard.

“You sure this just started?” He turned to Dupont. His breath smelled like dead leaves and Dupont suppressed a gag.

“Yes,” he said moving even farther away. “Just now.”

Clicker turned to the monitor with a puzzled look on his face. The blip separated into three, then four dots, each with its own tag: BLITZEN, DANCER, and DASHER.

Clicker typed a string of commands on the keyboard. “Wake up the Colonel, call NORTHCOM,” he said.

Dupont almost fell back in his chair. He regained his composure and leaned closer. “Why? It’s just the reindeer…”

Clicker turned around and grabbed him by the tie. “Wake everyone! Call NORTHCOM now! Now, dammit!” Suddenly, the blips for RUDOLPH and PRANCER appeared on the screen.

Ayala hastily shifted back and forth, ready to ask what the problem was when all of the screens on the command center lit up with yellow warning signs.

“Contact! Eastern Seaboard,” one of the operators yelled from his desk.

“Multiple Contacts! 378 miles off the Gulf Coast!”

“Multiple Contacts! Atmospheric entry above the Western Seaboard!”

Each of the operators yelled as blips and lines flashed on their screens.

“Find me General O’Neill!” Clicker threw the phone at Dupont who sat frozen in his seat. CUPID separated from the SANTA 1 blip.

Clicker typed furiously on the keyboard, faster than it seemed possible for his fat hands.

“I got NORTHCOM on the line,” Dupont said dumbfounded. “On whose authority are we calling the General?”

“Dammit boy! Gimme that!” Clicker snatched the phone from Dupont’s hands just as the DONNER blip flurried across the screen. “It’s Clicker! Tell him we have a St. Helens event!”

VIXEN appeared onscreen.

“Multiple high altitude detonations!” Ayala yelled. As if on cue for an Electromagnetic Pulse, the screens on the Command Center flickered for a second but returned to normal activity.

“Contact!” Ayala yelled. “Atmospheric entry above us.”

“Seal off the base!” Colonel Jessup screamed as he charged through the door. He was the base Commander, and he was not happy. His face was glowing red and sweat formed on his upper lip.

“Nothing’s happening!” Clicker yelled back. “It’s just a glitch!” He ran his fingers through his greasy, gray hair.

“General O’Neill is on the line, Colonel.”

Colonel Jessup grabbed the phone. “Sir, we have multiple contacts on all…” He paused and turned toward Clicker. “Yes sir, he’s right here.” Through gritted teeth he handed the phone back to Clicker.

“It’s another St. Helens…” Clicker said into the phone. “Of course I’m sure. We’ve been expecting it, that’s why we moved Headquarters aboveground… How does it look over there?” He looked at the screens where lines of missiles extended toward their targets. “Good, yes, yes I know… look the first impact is on top of us right now. 3, 2, 1…” The line above Cheyenne Mountain flared up on Ayala’s screen. Everyone held their breaths.

“Boom!” Clicker yelled. Everyone jumped; a couple of techs began to cry. “You see? We’re still here…” Clicker grabbed Dupont’s shoulder; the Lt. had broken into tears. “I know, I’ll get right on it. Yeah, yeah, goodbye. Nice talking to you too.” He threw the phone at a rattled Jessup and walked toward the corridor.

“Okay everybody, listen up!” Clicker yelled from the entrance. “NORTHCOM and Central Headquarters were unaffected by our little glitch. It’s just a light show. Let it run its course. Go out, enjoy a beer, and forget everything that has happened, okay? You guys…” He clapped twice. “performed admirably. Keep it up.” He pulled a black tag from a pocket and clipped it on one of the straps of his overalls. He turned around, walked through the corridor, and entered the janitor’s closet.

Five seconds later, when Colonel Jessup ripped open the door to demand an explanation from Clicker, he found the closet empty except for a couple of brooms and a dirty bucket.

Dupont noticed how the SANTA 1 and all its reindeer blips returned to their original positions above the North Pole, and after a couple of seconds, they all blinked out.

The screens rebooted.

Hopefully Santa would wait until December 24
^th
to fly for real across the globe.

***

Clicker entered the Guardians’ Control Room at Pervagus Mansion. Unlike Cheyenne Mountain, Guardians Inc.’s Control Room was always in a flurry of activity. The sounds of a hundred operators clicking furiously and orders being given through headgears filled the room day and night.

Stupid humans.
Clicker told President Eisenhower from the very beginning that Magic would interfere with the electronic equipment in a base deep underground, especially Earth Elemental Magic, but still, they went ahead and built it.

Luckily for them, the Guardians convinced the Joint Chiefs of Staff to keep him as an advisor and liaison between the company and NORAD or things would have gotten ugly, like they did in 1980 when a groan from Manabozho made Mount St. Helens erupt.

The eruption was bad enough, but when the Pillar’s power- raw Earth elemental magic- finally reached Cheyenne Mountain two weeks later, it caused a computer malfunction that sent SANTA 1 flying, and the U.S. Air Force Command around the world got sporadic warnings that a nuclear attack was taking place.

Talk about bad rep for St. Nick.

Clicker followed procedure. He checked Manabozho, then all other North American Pillars for activity, and then checked flux lines, flux wells and all other known Magic hotspots for increased activity.

Everything was quiet, which could only mean that the glitch was caused by the Oracle’s magical influence.

The interference with major systems was expected, but a little earlier than the Guardians would have liked it. Clicker typed the report into the system and pressed enter.

High above the Control Room, in a large screen previously blank, a world map and a yellow dot appeared over NORAD.

For a couple of seconds, the Control Room fell silent as all technicians stared at the monitor. It was their first yellow alarm – a mixed feeling, of concern because it was the first major human system to malfunction. But, it was also a relief because it didn’t cause any casualties.

They all wondered how long it would be until a red dot appeared.

To be continued in

Guardians Inc.: Thundersword

Keep on reading for a sneak peek at Guardians Inc.: Thundersword!

Guardians Inc.: Thundersword

Part I: All for One

Outflanked

Thomas crouched behind the outcropping, making sure that his legs were completely protected. One of the centipede bolts the Azure guards used with their crossbows dug itself deeply into the rock behind him. The black-and-yellow centipede came to life almost immediately and began to pull itself out from the rock.

Thomas crushed it with his boot before the bug could finish. He wasn’t going to let eight inches of poisonous insect finish what his Grandfather’s Azure Guard had failed to do when it was a bolt.

Tony landed beside him with a thump. His chest was splattered with squashed centipede; the bolts either exploded on impact or bounced off the new body armor developed by the Guardians’ engineering team.

“Remind me why we left Henri at the mansion?” Tony yelled as a couple of bolts impacted the stone he had just jumped over. He squashed the animals as they came to life.

“It’s the middle of the day.”

“So?” Tony lifted his compact dart gun and sprayed blindly toward the enemy.

“People would be a little spooked, don’t you think?”

“Spooked?” A centipede appeared from the top of the rock where they were hiding, and Tony blew it away with the dart gun, splattering them both with centipede goo. “How do you think I feel right now? They’re shooting bugs at us Thomas! Bugs! And we only brought these peashooters with us!” He shot blindly again, yelling in frustration.

Thomas shared in that feeling. His Grandpa Morgan and the Azure Guards had beat them to this sign in the baths of Caracalla as they had done almost three months before in Aoudaghost, Mauritania. They’d just appeared out of nowhere, seconds before them, and beat them to the sign for the
Book of Concord
.

“Stop wasting darts! They’re gone,” Elise shouted from behind another rock. Doctor Franco had forbidden her to use Magic in this mission, and she had held back with the tech team that arrived minutes before to cordon off the area from the rest of Rome.

“Oh yeah?” Tony yelled back. “And how do you know that?”

“I saw them go in the baths,” Bolswaithe chimed in as he walked right out in the open. The robot butler was wearing the same fatigues and armor vest; although Thomas knew he probably didn’t need them. Pieces of centipede and green goo covered Bolswaithe’s chest and arms where he had been hit by the living bolts. “They’re gone,” he said, and gone with them was the third clue to the
Book of Concord
for sure.

“So there.” Tony stood up and holstered his gun. “Let’s see the damage.”

The baths built by Emperor Caracalla in 212 AD were amongst the most beautiful ruins left from the Roman Empire. They covered about 25 hectares, and its main bath building could hold about 1,600 bathers every day when it was in operation. Even today, the ruins were sometimes used as a stage for open-air opera concerts.

Guardians Inc.’s Watchmen Teams and the Rome Police had closed the baths to the public claiming some minor emergency, which allowed Thomas to search for the sign. But somehow, Grandpa had beat him to it.

Again.

Their firefight with the Azure Guards had pinned them in place while Grandpa decoded the sign and made an escape through the inner buildings of the bath, just like in Mauritania.

Like them, the Azure Guards had a quick method of transportation, but while Thomas had to either find a door connected to Pervagus Mansion or walk two streets on the left to enter its main gate. The Azure Guards opened magical portals on specific walls or areas where a remnant of Magic was already present.

Elise had tried to explain how the Magic portals worked, but if Thomas didn’t get the mechanics and physics involved in their own mode of transportation, Magic was even more confusing.

“This way.” Bolswaithe led them through the entrance of the baths; remnants of the mosaics that adorned the walls were scattered on the ground along the ruins.

They reached a small doorway; the small chain that restricted access to the public was broken.

“This is right beside the ‘Laconicum’, the steam room,” Bolswaithe offered. “It was probably a storage room of some kind.”

“So they had steam rooms?” Tony was on point, weapon ready, and peeking into the doorway.

“And warm and cold pools, masseuses, doctors, a gymnasium…”

Thomas liked having Bolswaithe as a friend. The robot was an excellent chef, a great tourist guide, and an accomplished bodyguard. Bolswaithe also had a direct connection to the Library Computer net and the satellites orbiting Earth, with him by their side, they could never get lost.

The small corridor opened up into a large room. The roof, like all the others on the ruins, was long gone, but the floor still had the original orange-and-white-tiled motifs. A couple of dozen doves walked around the room pecking food from the floor.

“Anything?” Elise asked. She could sense the remnants of the Oracle’s Magic.

“Here’s a bug,” Tony said with distaste. A centipede was scurrying toward them; he aimed his gun, but Elise was faster. In a swift move, she captured the centipede in a glass jar.

She lifted it up to her face to take a closer look. The little beast clacked its pincer-like jaws at her.

“New pet?” Tony asked with a grimace.

“Kiran asked me to catch one alive if I could.” Elise placed the jar in her backpack. “You know how she loves animals…Baboon.”

Tony scoffed. It was bad enough that Doyenne Kiran called him “Baboon” every time they practiced, but now that Elise had began taking martial arts classes with them and earned the moniker of “Wasp,” she rubbed it in every time she could.

Thomas walked around the room trying to figure out what the sign had been, and although he could sense the Oracle’s fading signature, the actual sign was gone.

He nodded. Grandpa had beaten him again, and him and his “friend” – the Warmaster – now had an advantage over them.

“Over here, Thomas,” Bolswaithe called from a corner.

A small stiletto was embedded in the wall holding an envelope with the words:
“For Thomas.”
He recognized Grandpa’s handwriting immediately – the elongated capitals and the slight angle he gave to each letter. He reached for the envelope, but Tony stopped him.

“Might be a trap,” he cautioned.

“I sense no magic coming from it,” Elise said.

“It might not be magical.”

“There is no apparent chemical tampering,” Bolswaithe offered. “No traces of biological venom of toxin either.”

Tony opened his hands at the butler, “Now tell me how you know that?” he asked. “Did you take it to a lab already?”

Thomas and Elise knew that Bolswaithe was probably the most advanced robot in the world, but at his request, they kept his identity to themselves. Tony and Henri remained oblivious, but Tony was getting wiser every day, and he’d already said something about Bolswaithe’s abilities “not being natural.”

Bolswaithe patted his goggles nonchalantly. “Built-in Spectrophotometer.”

“Really…” Tony grabbed his own goggles and checked them against Bolswaithe’s. “Same model, same brand, but mine are only tinted. Why would yours be different?” He flashed Thomas a puzzled look.

Bolswaithe extended his goggles to Tony. “You can check the results yourself if you want. Just use the transient absorption instead of the time-resolved Spectroscopy, and be ready to compensate for inter-modulation when using the four wave mixed setting.”

Tony froze short of taking the goggles, and Bolswaithe lifted an eyebrow. Thomas suppressed a giggle.

“You…ah.” Tony hesitated. “You double-checked?”

“Triple-checked. There are no traces of chemical or biological agents or contaminants.”

Tony pulled back his hand. “Then we’ll take your word for it.” He smacked his lips together. “Go ahead, Thomas.”

Thomas pulled the stiletto from the wall and handed it over to Tony. He was more interested in whatever message his Grandfather had sent him than the little weapon. He pulled out a white card from the envelope and opened it. It was a simple message written in the same elegant handwriting.

Happy 16th Tom.

Love,

Gramps.

P.S. Enjoy and be careful!

Thomas’s eyes watered, but he held back the tears. His birthday had been a couple of months ago, and only those close to him in Guardians Inc. had thrown a little celebration for him. He received a couple of emails from his hometown in Ohio, but he’d attended less than a month at the high school at Carlsbad – not enough time to make a lasting relationship at all.

He missed Gramps. He swallowed a lump in his throat.

Something else was at the bottom of the envelope. He turned it over and a key fell on his palm. An old key – its teeth were a little bit eroded from use – but Thomas knew that it still worked fine.

It was a wonderful gift, and Thomas smiled in a way he hadn’t smiled since becoming the Cypher.

“So?” Elise asked. “What is it?”

Thomas held the key for all to see.

“I got a car,” he said beaming.