The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption (7 page)

“You see, gentlemen, I have no fear.” The
words from Yeshua were now in Aramaic once again. “Faith will ever
vanquish fear. For we walk by faith, not by sight, and He is with
us always.”

The young man ambled over and crouched down
close to Saul, gently brushing a lock of unruly gray hair from the
elder’s blood-, sweat-, and dirt-caked forehead. “Greater is He
that is in you, than he who is in the world,” he whispered softly
into his mentor’s ear. The youth then stood, and, after quickly
gathering a few items from his work area into a makeshift cloth
knapsack, dashed off towards the path to Tyre, following the
footsteps recently lain by the Keeper.

I turned to Spud, “We’re just going to let
him go?”

“Well, we’ve caught and stopped our Andart,
and preserved the timeline.
That
was our assignment.” Spud
gestured at the immobile elder. “Anyway, I rather think Yeshua’s
got someone watching out for him, you know.”

I snorted. “Yeah, us.”

Spud’s gaze continued to follow Yeshua until
he disappeared in the distance. I almost didn’t hear him return a
“yeah.”

Chapter 4

Mission Accomplished?

Site wrap-up took over an hour. We had to
check each of the bricklayers and made sure their injuries were not
life-threatening, as well as repair as much of the damage to the
property from our fight as possible. Our pedagogues at
Mingferplatoi Academy had stressed this rule repeatedly: take great
care when you’re on assignment in the past, because an unexpected
or unnecessary death could disturb the timeline and wreak havoc
with the future.
Our
future.

Grunting, I levved a large clay pot to a
prominent position in the center of the work area in which we
emptied our pockets of all our shekels in hopes of repaying the
masons for their, uh, inconvenience. I observed that a few of the
men were starting to regain consciousness, and I urged Spud to
hurry. We wouldn’t want to have to fight Round Two.

Spud surveyed the scene quickly and agreed.
“Appears acceptable. I think we are finished. Let us tractor our
Andart back to Core for questioning. And then, well, I am rather
keen to have a shower.”

I wiped the sweat off my forehead with a
grin. Amen to that!

* * *

Zygan Intelligence Earth Core
Station—present day

“Huzzah, huzzah!” Everett Weaver greeted us
as we arrived at Earth Core with our prisoner.

“Ev, you are such a geek,” I groaned. “Got a
holding suite ready?”

Everett, scowling, waved a hand as the
altitudinous catascopes Dieter and Derek appeared silently beside
us. “’Bill and Ted’ here’ll take care of him.”

The tight-lipped siblings grabbed the
still-frozen elder by the armpits and carried him off to the
holding cells, I mean, suites.

“Bill and Ted?” Spud asked, puzzled.

“Our two Doppelgangers in a Bizarro
Universe”, I tried unsuccessfully to explain as I tugged Spud by
the elbow in the opposite direction. “Come on. Gary’s waiting for
our report.”

Still decked in our Phoenician duds, we met
Gary in his elegant office, and crashed in his plush leather
chairs. Layers of dust flew off of us as we sat down, to Gary’s
barely concealed dismay.

We briefed Gary on the events
we’d experienced over the past few days, which, due to our having
been in a time loop, had lasted only about half an hour in Earth
Core time. A time loop is a great perk of time travel, by the way.
Imagine you’re holding a long string, one end in each hand. If you
bring your hands together, you have a loop hanging below them. When
we’d journeyed back in time on assignment to Sidon, we’d started
our journey at the end of the string in your left hand and traveled
down and up the dangling loop to your right hand. Meanwhile, Gary
and Ev, who’d remained in the present, simply crossed from the
string end in your left hand over to the string end in your right
hand. While we’d spent over two days in Phoenicia, the time that
had passed in Earth Core was less than an hour after we’d
originally left.

Ev had automatically uploaded our Ergal
recordings of the events in Sidon when we arrived back at Core, so
there wasn’t really much we could tell Gary that he didn’t already
know. I so wish we could use Ergal logs to avoid
all
our
boring meetings.

We did have a few unanswered questions,
however. Who was the old man we had captured? One of Benedict’s
Andarts, of course, but was he the only guerilla tasked with
assassinating Yeshua? Was there a chance that Benedict had had more
than one Andart, or attack, planned in Sidon? If so, Yeshua might
still be in danger. I hated to bring up the suggestion, but perhaps
we needed to go back to Sidon for a few more days to be sure that
Yeshua was safe.

Gary held up his hand. “We’ll know more after
we NI
^xi
Sutherland, your captive.
That’s his real name, by the way. You might also be happy to learn
that we’ve now got Yeshua Bar Maryam protected throughout his known
lifetime with a temporal vector shield.”

My jaw dropped. Temporal vector shields, a
Zygan defense barrier that prevents unauthorized access to a
designated slice of time, were out of our league here in the
boonies of our galaxy. Not even Quadrant Chiefs were authorized or
trained to implement temporal vector shields, much less Chiefs of
Zygint Field Stations like Gary on primitive planets like
Earth.

“We’ve already discovered that Sutherland is
one of Benedict’s top lieutenants,” Gary continued. “He should be
able to provide Zygint with a wealth of information about
Benedict’s plans.” Gary sat forward and looked directly at us.
“That’s where you come in.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. From the
expression on Spud’s face, I could see he was equally
unenthusiastic.

Gary chose to ignore our discomfort. “Central
has decided that Sutherland’s interrogation is best done at
Headquarters,” he explained, “so, we’ll have him ready for you to
transport to Zyga in half an hour.”

I rolled my eyes. Spud’s prediction had been
right. In the end, we’d only have enough time to hit the
showers.

* * *

My two-seater Zoom starcruiser had been
Ergal-expanded to create a sealed cell for one behind our cockpit.
For one Andart prisoner. We would be transporting Sutherland in
that cell to Zygan Intelligence Central Headquarters in Zyga’s
capital city of Mikkin, just a couple of miles from our old
stomping grounds—literally—at Mingferplatoi Academy.

After a quick bath, I slipped back into my
regular uniform of jeans and tank-top and met Spud at the Earth
Core hangar. The trip to Zyga would take us about three hours, even
on autopilot in hyperdrive, so Spud came prepared for the ride with
a backpack full of yellowed papers printed in tiny fonts.

“You’ve got something against illustrations?”
I couldn’t resist ribbing.

He returned my serve. “
I
no longer
need them to be able to read.”

Ouch.

Ward Burton was putting the finishing touches
on the preparations for our transport. Through the aft viewscreens
of our ship, we could spy Sutherland seated quietly in his solo
prison behind us. Shorn of his facial hair, the ex-Saul looked
substantially younger than the wizened old man we’d captured in
Sidon, but still appeared middle-aged (over 30). I expected to see
daggers flying from Sutherland’s eyes aimed at us, but,
surprisingly, the Andart kept looking down, almost immobile in the
back-seat chamber, staring at his hands.

“He can’t see out,” Wart explained to us as
we approached the vehicle.

“That’s probably all for the best,” I said,
relieved. “He’s locked in there, right?”

“Tight as a drum,” Wart reassured me.
“E-shield all around him.”

I nodded, then observed that the Sputnik dent
on my fender had finally been repaired, and broke into a grin.
“Thanks, Wart. I owe ya one.”

“Anytime.” He grinned back and gave us a
combination wave and salute. “Good work, guys, and good luck!”

I waved back and eased into the left front
seat behind nav controls. As soon as Spud had pulled down his
gull-wing door, I ordered, “Engage.” The ship came to life, our
holo-guides popping up to surround us just in front of the foreward
viewscreen.

“Zyga” was all I needed to say, and the Zoom
cruiser invisible-ized, levved, and rotated to face the massive
warehouse door that led to the decrepit alley where our Chidurian
rat guards were standing watch. Wart had always waxed nostalgic
about the days ships could just lev out of the roof of the
warehouse, before Earth sent up GPS satellites. Now, though our
ship was invisible and couldn’t be spotted by Earth’s primitive
radar technology, the warehouse’s old hangar gate was clearly
observable from the stratospheric cameras.

“Those satellites can see every time the door
opens or closes,” Wart had explained. “We sure don’t need a Google
Earth fan with too much time on his hands counting when and how
often we launch, you know.”

So, a few years ago, the metal side gate
leading into the usually deserted alley had become the new Earth
Core hangar door. As our ship approached it, it rolled open with a
grinding crunch that sent the Chidurian rat guards scurrying away
in all directions. We floated horizontally into the passageway and
then, powered by our whisper-quiet cold fusion generator, smoothly
rose into the sky.

As we zoomed past Mars, I waved at Zygan
Intelligence’s Deimos Outpost for good luck. That’s kind of a
superstition of mine. I do it every time I fly by Mars’ moons. I
didn’t expect a comm back from the guard team on staff. Yoshi and
Ajani were probably catching up on their sleep, now that the
temporal vector shield was in place to protect Yeshua from
additional “Sutherlands”.

Once we’d cleared the asteroid belt, I
engaged autopilot, leaned back in my jumpseat, and stretched my
long arms and legs. For the next couple of hours, the greatest
danger I’d be facing was to my eardrums—from the unbearable operas
that Spud would play endlessly via our main speakers, just to get
my goat. In the adjacent seat, my partner had pulled out a few of
those monographs that he’d hoped to peruse during the long voyage
from his ‘rucksack’, and offered me a pick.

The most interesting article of the group was
a report on “Determining Time of Death via the Measurement of Body
Decomposition Parameters”. I passed. I don’t know why Spud even
bothered reading those boring things anyway. He could directly
upload tons more information in a tenth of the time. But, Spud was
a bit of a Luddite at heart, and would sometimes opt to do things
the old-fashioned way. I, on the other hand, have never much cared
for tradition. In my experience, it’s just an excuse to keep the
risk-averse from trying something new.

I don’t often get a chance just to veg, what
with the fourteen-hour days we put in on the set, and so, gazing
out at the planets as we maneuvered through our solar system, I
realized how much I’d missed being out in space. Next Monday, we
were due back at the studio for our last week of filming for our
first season. Maybe after that, I’d take a couple of days to tour
the heavens before making my duty-bound pit stop with the family in
Maryland.

If
Bulwark
was renewed for Season 2,
I’d have to be back at work on the set in July. I’d still have a
couple of months to pick up the trail of my detective work tracking
John’s disappearance. The records of John’s assignments for Zygint
were unfortunately classified and top secret. Even as a catascope,
I didn’t have access to that level of security. Not digitally nor
in person at Earth Core or Zygint Central. During our internship,
I’d spent most of my off-duty hours researching John’s activities,
especially his projects for Zygint in the year before his
disappearance. All I’d been able to discover was the name of his
last mission: Project Helios. Once on hiatus, I was determined to
resume the search full-time and find out what--

A flash caught my eye for an instant. I
nudged Spud and pointed at our fore viewscreen towards Io,
Jupiter’s somewhat habitable moon where Zygint had our guard
outpost for the outer planets, but neither of us could spy anything
more. I sat back in my seat with a shrug. Maybe I’d just seen one
of those sparkly things—floaters—that drift in the back of your
eye, but, no, there it was again. Spud saw it this time, too. We
looked at each other, and I engaged comm—with maximum encryption,
of course.

“Io, Io Outpost, everything okay?”

Static. Were Hsin and Rawiri asleep, too? Or
had something happened to keep them from responding? Like an Andart
attack?

“Io Outpost, please respond.” I tried not to
let my voice betray my growing anxiety.

Static.

“Scan Broadband,” I instructed the comm
system to no avail. Still no answer from Io. This was very
disturbing.

I looked at Spud. Now what? Obviously, we
should go investigate and help our colleagues if they were in
trouble. But, we were in the middle of a pretty important task
ourselves. I nodded at our prisoner in the back.

“Do not even consider it,” Spud admonished,
then commed. “Deimos, Core, Condition Yellow at Io. Repeat, yellow.
Wha—?”

I had swung our ship around in the shadow of
Ganymede, another of Jupiter’s moons, to get a closer look. Spud
shut off comm and scowled at me.

“What the devil are you doing?” He was
clearly angry.

“It’ll take the Core team too long to get a
patrol ship out here. I’m not leaving Io Outpost alone until
back-up arrives.”

“You do realize this could be a trap?” Spud
argued.

I checked the scan holo to my right again.
“Locator shows we’re clear for miles. I’ll move off right away if
we get an incursion.”