by John Booth
Bronwyn made her way through the rubble, chairs and sofa’s flying out of the way as she approached. ‘The girl’s a bulldozer,’ I whispered to myself. Then I heard screaming from what remained of the outer office.
Switching off the shield around me I headed in the direction of the screams. The woman outside didn’t deserve to die because of her bosses sins.
The outer office was a mess. All the windows were gone and what was left of the posh glass lift was hanging off the side of the building by a single cable. I pushed it to the side of the building and welded it into place.
The woman was hiding under a desk. She appeared unharmed and ran into my arms as soon as she saw me.
“Save me,” she shouted and then, as she looked over my shoulder, “And him too, but me first.”
As she wasn’t letting go, I spun the two of us so I could see what she meant. Our guide was picking himself off the floor. Apart from the nasty gash above his eye he seemed to be in one piece.
I carried the young lady over to him and put out a hand. When he grasped it I hopped us down to the foyer and disentangled myself. Then I hopped back to the Penthouse.
Bronwyn was staring at Richard through his shield. He was looking back at her when he wasn’t glancing down at his smart phone while tapping its screen impatiently.
Lana was free and investigating Greta’s cylinder. Greta’s look of superiority had vanished and she looked frightened.
“Hi ladies, does anybody have one of those knives with a tin opener attachment?” I asked.
Lana grinned. “We will need more than that to get through this. It’s a military grade d’Tachi defense shield.”
Richard smiled at her. “Then you know that nothing on this primitive planet can get through it. Not even someone with your wizard powers.”
“Weak points?” Bronwyn asked.
“Generator on the roof. On a battlecruiser the generator would be protected, but this is just an office building.”
For the first time since they had met, Bronwyn gave Lana a friendly smile.
“So what are we waiting for?”
I stepped back as Bronwyn and Lana began to tear the building above us to pieces. With a spherical shield in place over my head, I watched in awe as enormous chunks of concrete and steel collapsed onto the floor around us.
Lana stopped to look at me.
“Are you just going to watch?”
“Typical man,” Bronwyn added, “When two girls start doing it for themselves that’s all they ever do.”
“To be fair, Jake has often suggested a threesome.”
Bronwyn laughed and a larger than usual piece of the floor above bounced off my shield.
Okay, if that was the way they wanted to play, who was I to argue? A quick look round and I decided the steel supports looked like good targets. I knocked out five of them on one side and what was left of the roof above began to tilt alarmingly. Lightning flashed across the surface of the cylinders and Richard and Greta stumbled as the building shook. I cut through the ceiling on the side of the roof that was still supported and the cylinders began to tilt.
Richard swiped his fingers across his phone and grinned at me. He and Greta vanished.
“The bastards have teleported,” Lana shouted.
The top of the building collapsed on us and we hopped above it, flying a few feet above the rubble.
“It’s amazing the floor hasn’t collapsed onto the one below,” I remarked.
“British engineering,” Bronwyn suggested. “Probably had a Welsh designer.”
“I need to go to the foyer and destroy any recordings of me hopping in and out.”
Both girls nodded.
“I’m glad you saved those two,” Bronwyn said in a serious voice. “Wizards tend to ignore the collateral damage.”
“I didn’t think you’d noticed.”
Bronwyn stared at me as though I’d just suggested two and two equaled three. “I notice everything you do.”
Before I could think of an answer the sun vanished. Well that was how it seemed. We looked up to see a rectangular spaceship, slightly wider than the building beneath us. It had materialized a hundred feet above us. There were no forces pushing us down. It just floated serenely above us in all its immenseness.
“Richard?” I asked
“d’Tachi design,” Lana confirmed.
“Can we take it out?” Bronwyn asked.
“We can try,” Lana replied.
37. Spaceship
“Follow my lead,” Lana said and swooped past me and up towards the gunmetal colored ship. Bronwyn was right behind her so I took up the tail position. Lana seemed to be looking for something.
“Aim for the field generator nozzles,” she said. I wondered what one looked like. Before she could show us by example we were joined in the sky by another figure, this one apparently painted silver.
“We are on your side,” the figure shouted in a familiar voice.
“Esta?” Lana asked. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought your father. Just in case you couldn’t handle the tech.”
The four of us formed a huddle in mid-air.
“You didn’t think we could handle a bit of technology?” Bronwyn accused.
“Well just look at the mess you made. And how many of the people you were after did you capture?”
Bronwyn looked abashed.
“You were using so much energy it was easy to find the building as soon as you started fighting. We caught one of them as she teleported out. The other one got away,” Esta continued.
The ship above us vanished and the return of sunlight blinded me.
“It’s become invisible,” Lana explained.
“Come on, your father is waiting for us.”
Esta held out her hands and we took them. In Bronwyn’s case there was a certain amount of reluctance involved.
We hopped and found ourselves in a large room. The room was occupied by men and women operating equipment using holographic displays. Most sat at consoles, but the ones nearer the front stood on a raised platform. Behind them was Alan d’Fallon, issuing orders. I reached over to Bronwyn and touched her shoulder, giving her the d’Tachi language. She smiled at me.
Alan noticed us and turned from the crew.
“We have Grena d’Hans and we have the co-ordinates she was teleporting to. We extracted them from her teleportation device just before you destroyed it.”
“Where was she going?” I asked.
“Not a clue. The multiverse is a big place and the d’Tachi have no records of anything at those coordinates. It’s in a universe we have never had any contact with.”
“You’ve been to Earth before though?”
Alan shook his head.
“If you consider the multiverse as full of gleaming jewels everybody wants to investigate, your world is somewhere in the corner under a pile of dust.”
Esta joined in the conversation.
“I brought them here. Lana’s father promised me they have no interest in your world beyond the capture of d’Conte and d’Hans.”
“Is that true?” I asked Alan, watching him closely. For me the d’Tachi Federation was a much bigger threat than their two renegade capitalists.
He shrugged. “Knowledge is power and you are making a name for yourself across the multiverse. It is said that even the Progenitors fear you.”
I continued to stare.
“But I did promise to wipe the coordinates of your miserable planet from our computers as soon as we were back in d’Tachi space. And the d’Fallons are as good as our word. Ask Lana.”
I turned to Lana and she nodded.
Alan slapped his hands together. “Good. Now that is out of the way I can inform you of what we have done.” He turned back to the displays in front of the crew.
“We have teleported onboard all the d’Tachi tech from the building below. Analysis indicates we have brought up six thousand, two hundred and fourteen detectors and one hundred a
nd forty-four larger devices of unknown use. We have retrieved a similar number of d’Tachi components. Scans suggest there are no more d’Tachi components left on your planet.”
“You’ve left the X-phones?”
He looked back to the displays. “We are not interested in the local communication devices. They use a high tech component, differently configured to the ones using our technologies, which appears to be alien to both our worlds. Would you like us to dispose of them?”
I shook my head. “Leave them.”
“As you wish. Our mission here is over. We have purged our production facilities of traitors and no more detectors will be made using d’Tachi technology.”
“There is still the matter of Richard de Conte.”
Alan seemed uninterested.
“We picked up a message from him before he teleported, sent to someone on this planet. It said he was called away and that they should continue doing business without him. I do not think he will risk coming back to Earth. However, we will leave a ship on station if you desire?”
“No. I don’t want that.” In fact, it was the very last thing I wanted.
Alan looked away. “It will take us some time to obtain any information from d’Hans. I will inform my daughter should anything of interest to you come to light.”
“What about those coordinates? The ones d’Conte went to?”
Alan mused. Then he walked away and began talking to a female member of the crew. They were all wearing the same silver costumes as Esta and they concealed as little as body paint. It must be fun being a spaceman in the d’Tachi Federation.
Bronwyn moved closer to me.
“Can we trust him?”
Lana answered for me.
“My father’s word is his bond. He would rather die than break it.”
“I think we have no choice,” I told Bronwyn. “And I trust Lana.”
Bronwyn looked at Lana. They seemed to have lost their enmity during the fight and it wasn’t an unfriendly look.
“I also trust Lana,” Bronwyn said after a long pause.
Alan walked back to us.
“Do you have a building where we can leave you a transporter? It will be hard wired to the coordinates d’Conte teleported to, so you can use it at your leisure.”
I had just the place, though the occupant might have other ideas.
“Exactly how big is it?”
We hopped outside the spaceship and watched it depart. This was not in the slightest bit spectacular. One moment it was there, the next it was gone. Then we hopped into the Bat Cave.
[What is that thing and what is it doing in my home?]
I patted my angry dragon on the neck.
“It’s just a teleporter. Every dragon cave should have one.”
[I want it out of here, Jake. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?]
“All the other dragons will be jealous,” I continued.
For a second I had him. Then flames poured through the cave.
[I want it out. OUT. OUT. OUT.]
It took me a while to mollify him. Lana, Bronwyn and Esta returned to their respective homes long before I had finished.
38. Consequences
I hopped back home in the early evening. Pacifying a dragon is not as easy as you might think. I had to promise never to bring anything to the Bat Cave without his express permission in the future. Touchy or what?
I appeared in a crowded room. One of my children can be a handful; two is more like babysitting tornados.
Anna had brought Esmeralda and Morgana to visit. Anna is about fifteen and is going to be a stunning woman any day now. She’s a wizard, just like her sister, Urda, and has pledged to defend Salice.
“Our Lord Wizard is honoring us with his presence,” Esmeralda announced. Anna gave me a shy smile while my kids stopped playing with her and took off towards me. I was pushed back against the wall as they hit at chest height.
“Killing Daddy is not a greeting.”
My kids giggled. They tried to tickle me and I responded in kind. I won.
Jenny switched on the television and changed it to a news channel.
“Your doing, I suppose?”
The sound was muted, but there was no need for it. An aerial view looked down on a building missing its top floor. Strangely, it didn’t look as damaged as I remembered it. Jenny flipped the sound on.
“Despite the total devastation of the top floor, the de Conte building is largely undamaged. Casualties are limited to the two people who were up there at the time of the explosion, and they are reported to doing well in hospital.”
There was a sudden constriction in my stomach. Something I should have done and forgotten about.
The picture changed to show a Fire Chief in dress uniform.
“It was a miracle that nobody was killed by flying glass. A number of vehicles sustained damage, but the area was empty of pedestrians when the explosion occurred.”
The picture changed to show a grim looking female reporter.
“Can you confirm this was a terrorist attack?”
“We have ruled nothing in or out. The COBRA committee has met and the country’s status has been moved from Amber to Red as a precaution.”
“What do you make of the object seen hovering over the building?”
The picture changed to a shaky cell phone image. Taken from ground level it looked as though the building had been cut in half. Then I worked out that the top half was the spaceship. If I had trouble figuring out what I was seeing, the television audience must have been baffled.
Not so the Fire Chief.
“That is a simple mirage caused by the heat of the explosion. The explosion heated the air above the building causing it to reflect an image of the building back at the viewer. As the heated gases disperse the illusion vanished.”
The reporter didn’t look surprised.
“So the people claiming this is an alien spaceship are mistaken?”
The fireman laughed. “Because alien spacecraft appear above every explosion and then vanish a few second later? Let’s be reasonable. I think mistaken is a very kind word to describe some of these people. I deal in reality not paranoia.”
There were butterflies in my stomach as I remembered video of me hopping people into the foyer and then hopping out again was still in the building. How could I have forgotten to destroy it? It was too late now. No doubt copies were in the hands of the police and the security services.
“I like people like that guy,” I said nervously. “He makes it so much easier to be a wizard.”
“Was it a spaceship?” Jenny asked.
“d’Tachi, de flacky, de smacky,” Morgana informed us.
“I want one,” Merlin said.
“Yes,” I finished for them. I wondered where my kids got their information from.
“Turn it off,” Esmeralda commanded and Jenny switched to television to standby. “I can’t think why the people of Wales bother with these devices. That event took place hundreds of miles away and you bring it into your home as though it was next door. You must spend your lives in a state of paranoia, expecting buildings to burst into flames, people to shoot you, or rape you in your sleep. When the truth is those things don’t happen around you very often.”
“It’s mainly for entertainment,” I pointed out.
Esmeralda shook her head. “I’ve seen your entertainment. They make things worse.”
“Did you catch the de Conte’s?” Jenny asked.
“One of them. We stopped the production of the detectors and seized those they had finished.”
“And have you resolved the threat to your world?” Esmeralda asked.
“What threat? The d’Tachi spaceship has left.”
Esmeralda sighed. “Sometimes husband, I wonder if you are capable of logical thought. You are brilliant in battle or when solving magical problems, but you still do not see it, do you?”
“These people didn’t come here by accident,” Jenny said quietly. “They came to Earth because
you live here.”
“See? I told you that Jenny is highly intelligent.”
The butterflies bothering me intensified. I had put the Earth at risk, and more importantly, my family.
“It’s just a coincidence,” I said, not even convincing myself.
“And if you were one of these people, stumbling on Earth by accident. Would you choose this island you live on to build a factory.”
Jenny laughed, which I thought was a bit unpatriotic.
“They would have chosen China or the Far East,” she said. “Maybe the US, if they wanted to hire chip designers.”
“They didn’t put their factories in Wales,” I said defensively.
“Nobody would have believed that,” Jenny said. “Not even Plaid Cymru. Okay… I take that back, some of them would.”
My phone rang. Never have I been so grateful for an interruption in my life.
There was no caller ID. I pressed ‘answer’.
“Yes?”
“Jake? It’s good to talk with you again.”
The voice was Welsh and familiar, but I couldn’t place it. The caller must have deduced my confusion.
“It’s Brandon Jones, Inspector Jones to you these days. No, I’m only joking. Do you remember all those missing person cases you used to deal with?”
I certainly did. Brandon Jones had been a thorn in my side back then. But we had become friends in recent years.
“I heard you were working in London?”
“I am, though I have a bit of a roving brief these days. How are your wives and children getting on?”
“Fine, in fact they are here with me now.”
Brandon became all business.
“Then I won’t keep you from them. There’s been a bit of bother in London. I’m sure you know all about it. In fact, we’ve had to have a cover up. Bad business that, not really British. Can you be at Chief Inspector Thomas’s office for nine o’clock tomorrow?”
I had wanted to use the teleport tomorrow, but I could hold off a few hours.
“Yes.”
“I’ll see you there then. Oh and Jake, come in through the front door to the police station. You are getting careless.”