The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption (48 page)

He nodded. “We used to use hydrogen but we
lost the Osiris with a lightning strike outside Nea Romi thirty
years ago.”

“Zeus was in one of his snits again,” joked a
tall woman wearing earmuffs around her neck as she passed us, on
her way to the ship.

“Hypatia will be your pilot,” Heron
explained, chuckling. “The Nea Romaians weren’t quite so sanguine
about the tragedy, seeing as they get so many tourists from both
Greater Romi and the Philaic states. So, helium it is.”

“Indeed,” replied Spud, sounding as if he
understood all Heron’s references. John and I just did synchronized
eye rolls.

We settled into cushioned seats in the back
of the blimp’s gondola where we could chat. Hypatia distributed
earmuffs for us all, promising to turn off the blimp’s whining
electric motor after we had reached sailing altitude. At least we’d
have a chance to pick Spud’s brain about what he’d discovered or
deduced.

I noted that most of the other passengers had
brought along their clay tablets, I guess to read, on the two-day
voyage. They also carried knapsacks for their togas, and-- “Are
they providing food?” I asked Spud.

“Heron was kind enough to donate nutrition
for the trip,” he responded, pointing to a small cloth bag which
was filled with what looked like energy bars. “Our pilot has
water.”

“Awesome,” said John, his tone implying the
opposite.

If I wasn’t a Zoom Cruiser pilot I might’ve
found the blimp’s takeoff off-putting. We rose at a steep angle of
over 45 degrees. Glad to have the earmuffs—the engine strained to
get the blimp up to 5000 feet. Hope we wouldn’t need that deafening
engine power to handle bad weather along the way.

I must have said that aloud, as one of the
other passengers turned to me and said, “Don’t worry. We land if
there’s a bad storm and wait it out.”

I smiled and nodded thanks. This trip could
take a while… Maybe we should’ve opted for a covered wagon.

We were gliding over Texas, or whatever the
USA residents were calling it now, before Spud was willing to fill
us in.

“I searched the historical records for three
millennia,” he explained. “I was astonished to discover that this
rustic library had access to data from much of the planet.”

“And?” I didn’t much care to hear about his
research methods.

“It
is
relevant, Rush,” Spud chided.
My partner knew me too well. “Because I observed that the changes
we have witnessed did not affect the entire world. For example, the
Orient, Japan, China, still exist, though as skirmishing sovereign
empires.”

Spud eyed me and my brother. We both
nodded.

“Where I did observe earthshaking changes was
in the Americas—which do not exist as such—Europe, and the
Mid-East.” He paused for effect. “After a particular branching off
point.”

“Really?” John frowned. “What do you
mean?”

“That up until a certain point, this Earth’s
history was
our
history. After that, the timeline changed.”
He cleared his throat. “It took me much of the night to find the
intersection as I had to pore over written records from the ‘Coal
Centuries’ and the ‘Oil Centuries’, the Moon settlements, the
Crusades, and—“

“Come on, Escott, what’d you learn?” John
interrupted. And I was going to ask about the Moon settlements.

“That the new ‘Europeans’ have unlocked the
riddle of cold fusion. But this continent,” he pointed at the
flatlands below us, “still fears the technology.”

“No, dammit, about the timeline.”

Spud bestowed upon my brother an irritated
glare. “The timeline shifted within our first millennium.
Specifically, in 33 AD.”

I felt a spasm grip my stomach. Had Spud
somehow seen that date in the travel cache of my Ergal? I turned my
gaze out the window, hoping that Spud wouldn’t notice. But he
did.

“Where did you get the Somalderis,
Shiloh?”

I stiffened, not daring to answer. He didn’t
miss that either.

“Come on, Escott. What’s the Fleece got to do
with history?” John interceded.

I had never heard Spud’s voice so arctic. “I
have deduced that a young prophet,” he said, “a self-proclaimed
religious leader in the province of Judea, was given the Fleece to
wear as an undergarment during his tortuous execution. Three days
later after his death, he was to return and appear as alive before
his followers, inspiring them to carry on his mission.

Spud took a dramatic breath. “But without the
Somalderis, Yeshua Bar Maryam could not transport to heaven or
resurrect himself to proclaim a miracle. He passed away, as have so
many other visionaries, a footnote in religious history.”

Spud’s tone was fierce. “Where did you get
the Somalderis?”

“I-I just borrowed it.” I still couldn’t face
Spud. “I planned to return it as soon as we’d rescued John. But it
took a lot longer for us to get back than I’d figured.”

Spud’s eyes narrowed. “You
stole
the
Fleece from Yeshua?!”

“You’d understand if you had a brother.” I
reached out and took John’s hand.

A flicker of agony flashed across Spud’s
features, then his expression turned cold as ice. “You may have a
brother, but it is likely that
I
no longer do. And your
foolish actions have likely—I say that when we arrive in Nea
Athina, we should take a jaunt to what was Maryland and see if your
own brothers and sisters have survived.”

My surprise at the notion that Spud had a
sibling was trumped by the sudden shock of realizing that my
actions to save John might have risked the lives of the rest of my
family. Was that possible? If so, what in the name of heaven had I
done? The tears I’d fought to hold back so many times in the past
few days now fell without restraint. John, looking stricken, hugged
me as I sobbed. Spud remained impassive, frozen in anger, his eyes
boring through my waterfall with ongoing accusations of guilt.

Doomed. Or should I say, ‘damned’.

Chapter 14

Truth and Consequences

Somewhere over the USA—present day?

It was the coldest trip I’d ever taken. Our
voyage to Nea Athina lasted close to three days. We landed and
waited several times along the way due to the tornados and violent
spring thunderstorms that were ravaging the Southeast. Hypatia
fortunately had stocked some wool blankets that she loaned us so we
could cocoon both in the clouds and on the ground. I chose to cover
myself entirely with mine for the first leg of the journey, and
avoid Spud’s piercing unspoken accusations.

Had my well-intentioned plan to rescue John
really affected the lives of billions of people, including,
alarmingly, my own family? If so, was there any way we—I—could
repair the damage and return things to what they were? And, if I
could somehow reinstate our timeline, would I then be responsible
for the, the deaths of millions, like Hypatia and Heron, who were
alive in this new timeline today? The possibilities were
frightening—I now understood why Zygan Federation controls on time
travel were so strict, and why Zygint had a whole department at
Zygint Central to prevent and monitor for potential timeline
changes.

And the Zygan Federation itself? According to
Spud’s theory, as Zygfed wasn’t driven by Earth history, our Ergals
should have been working. Why weren’t they? If we could somehow fix
them and contact friends at Zygint, maybe we could get some advice
and help with this disaster. And then I could flee from the Omega
Archon before he sentenced me to Hell for a thousand years.

John tried to reach out to me—but, stewing in
my guilty ruminations, I pushed him away. Spud wasn’t inclined to
talk to either of us, and had left our seats for an empty one near
the front of the gondola. I wanted to be alone--and yet, I had
never felt so alone.

I must’ve fallen asleep, because it was dark
when I peeked out from under the blanket and saw Spud, back in his
seat, conversing with John.

“I have little evidence on which to base a
theory, but one hypothesis is that Zygfed and Zygint somehow no
longer exist in this brane. At least as regards to Earth.”

John scratched his head. “You mentioned a
Moon mission. Think these people made contact and something
negative happened?”

“Zygint’s Luna Outpost,” Spud corrected
himself, “the one we left, that is, is underground. Doubt they’d be
found if they didn’t want to be.” He put his fingertips together
and leaned back. “No, there must be another explanation. I shall
have to ponder the variables,” he said, waving a hand and closing
his eyes.

John sighed and looked over at me. I managed
a wan smile. He rested a hand on my shoulder, and whispered. “I’m
sure they’ll be all right. Don’t worry. Hope is the champion’s best
tool.”

I frowned. “You used to say patience
was.”

John laughed. “Neither of us is very patient,
Sis--and thank heavens for that.” His eyes twinkled. “I’m betting
on hope.”

I gave him a big hug.

* * *

A memory from the year before, Earth

John’s encouragement had helped shake me out
of my funk. I fed myself the mantra that I was a catascope—and
needed to rein in my emotions and stay sharp and ready to handle
every new contingency. And I was also a Rush—and Rushes, John
included, knew how to pull rabbits out of hats.

Using those talents, I’d even gotten us—me
and Spud—a Zygan Federation Auric Star a mere six months after we’d
completed our training at Mingferplatoi.

We’d been assigned to a routine temporal
recon shift of the inner planets of our own solar system. Temporal
patrols were rarely more than a formality in our bucolic octant of
the Milky Way, so I wasn’t expecting trouble—except maybe a
headache from the incessant wailing from our speakers of a singer
Spud had been raving about for weeks. Some Italian guy, Enrico
Caruso, whose booming solos were tickling my bones and making our
windscreens resonate. Fortunately, barring the opera, the afternoon
had otherwise been quiet.

“Five

J
battalions M-fanned at forty-eight mark five, status one thousand
meters!” Spud suddenly blared, trumping Caruso. His eyes were glued
to a holo display that had been scanning the past century.

(pronounced ‘SERJ’) fleets had been
known to invade industrial planets like Earth in order to drain
energy to re-fuel their ships, wreaking havoc on critical
electrical supplies and infrastructure.

I kept my voice steady. “Contact
metrics?”

“1965, 9 November, Ontario, Canada, 5:12 pm.
Looks like they’re heading for our power lines.” At extreme
magnification, the scan holo showed a gaggle of tiny blips that
seemed to be aiming for the vital electrical grid blanketing North
America’s Eastern Seaboard. I immediately activated our cruiser’s
Ergal to take us back in time to the location of the target
coordinates.

Our ship M-fanned in 1965 and raced to catch
the

. “They’re only thirty seconds
from power line entry,” Spud updated, continuing to track the
intruders, as we sped towards our quarry.

“We’re not going to make it!” I grunted, and,
ramped up the Zoom Cruiser’s propulsion to maximum. We watched our
holos in dismay as the spherical

ships entered the power lines through a Queenston station
transformer, and started a cascade of blackouts all over New
England as they traveled along the wires. Spud muttered an
inaudible curse.

I ordered our ship to miniaturize to

scale as quickly as possible. To have
a tactical advantage over the invading fleet, we mini’d our ship to
only sixty microns, ten times the size of the

vessels. Small enough to fly inside the power
lines, but still big enough to intimidate the

.

The

began
siphoning electrons for their turbines, knocking out the lights
city after city from Toronto to Manhattan. As the

vessels charged down the lines, their turbine
exhaust gave off a trail of yellow-green light.

On our holos, the northeast corridor of the
US now looked like an intricate spider web of glowing power lines.
In hot pursuit, we squeezed our own miniaturized craft into the
lines through a small hole in a transformer drum in New York, and
finally caught up with the

battalions. Hoping to profit from the element of surprise, we armed
our stun beams and aimed them at the—

Crack
! Our ship shook as we were hit
with a burst of fire from a regiment of

that had somehow snuck behind us in the power
line.

“Evasive!” I ordered nav controls, while Spud
assessed the damage.

Crack
!
Crack
! Eruptions of
lightning surrounded our ship as the

weapon bolts bounced off the electrons in the power lines to create
a torrent of self-perpetuating sparks that enveloped us in a prison
of photons.
Crack
!

“We’re intact so far, and our grounding is
holding,” Spud reported, “but we need to get out of here.”
Crack
!
Crack
! “Soon!”

The lightning bolts were coming at us from
both directions now, as

regiments in
front of us in the power line had turned to attack us as well.
Hoping to stall, we fired our stunners in a 360 dispersion,
managing to de-power several

vessels,
but we still couldn’t stop the rest of the fleet from hammering us.
We had to X-fan out of the power line, or we’d be electrocuted.

The idea came to me--like a bolt of
lightning. Those math uploads we got at Mingferplatoi had really
paid off after all. Shouting “Möbius!”
^xxxvii
, I entered the data
into our ship’s weapons control as fast as I could and initiated
the program.