Primal Link 2

by L Bowers

  “Stealth was supposed to be the name of the game,” I said with a raised eyebrow.

  “Somehow, I don’t think stealth will ever be a thing with you flying around. You’re like a beacon that attracts trouble with your bright green night-light.”

  “Ha, ha. How about we gather the rest of the team and head down over there?” I pointed to where the camp proper sat. All the machines had come to fight, so the place looked deserted. I hoped that meant this next part would be easy, but I doubted it.

  27

  Goshawk

  Every step I took came with the expectation that something would jump out at me. Flying was an option, but I wanted to stay near Angela after having fought the battle while separated. She didn’t seem to mind either as we walked hand-in-hand. It made holding our rifles a little awkward, but that was okay.

  The big guy, Bryant, walked alongside us in silence. Even the machine parts that made his movement possible were too quiet to hear. I kept waiting for him to revert and start another fight. At the same time, I was glad to have him and felt sorry for him. What would his life be like now that most of him was alien tech? There was no doubt he would feel the sting of PTSD his entire life from the shit he’d gone through on this planet.

  My eyes went to the right where Angela walked. How would any of us end up after this? Angela was strong, but even the strongest of us could be susceptible to the damage battle did to our psyches. I chuckled as I realized that I had gotten what I wanted, but was now questioning if it would destroy me later on.

  “What’s so funny?” Angela asked.

  At that moment, I didn’t want the helmet covering my face. I wanted to feel the breeze against my skin and hear her voice with my ears. The tech accommodated me by splitting the helmet down the center and having it break into pieces that moved behind my head.

  “That’s a lot better,” I said.

  “Agreed,” Angela said. “What do you think we’ll find here?”

  “We’ll find the terminal,” Bryant responded. “With it, you can control the indigenous machines.” I looked over at the big guy, but he didn’t add anything else.

  “Over there,” Kopf said as he appeared next to Angela.

  “Shit.” I grabbed my chest. “You trying to finish what the machines couldn’t?”

  “Told you it would work,” Pruise said from the other side of Kopf. I regretted the advice I’d given him about talking to her.

  “Nah, keeping things interesting is all,” Kopf said. “By the way, there’s a tent half a click from here with a big-ass computer terminal looking thing in it. Thought you might want to know.”

  “Okay, that I did want to know,” I replied. “But maybe next time, you don’t sneak up on me, yeah?”

  “Um, yeah. Sure thing, boss.”

  “Why am I not convinced?” I said.

  “Because you're smart enough not to buy into his bullshit,” Angela replied. “Now go and guard that thing while the rest of us make our way over.”

  Kopf and Pruise vanished while the rest of us kept walking. It took us another ten minutes to get to the biggest tent in the camp, not that there were a lot of tents.

  “I guess machine armies don’t have a big need for shelter,” Angel said.

  “I suppose not.”

  Kopf appeared as we approached. “Still no one here.” He pulled the tent flap back and gave us a view of the dark interior.

  “Let’s not waste time,” I replied as I entered. The terminal was very much like ones seen on the dragon ship, only bigger. It was vaguely pyramid-shaped, and the point at the top had replaced the center pole of the tent. In the center was a wide screen and console. Both were dark.

  “Anyone know where the power button is?” I asked.

  The air between me and the machine terminal shimmered. A bright white tear appeared, and a deep voice that sounded like it spoke with a mouth full of marbles answered me. “Maybe I can be of assistance.” A familiar alien figure stepped out of the thin tear in space.

  “Krawtesh?” I asked in amazement.

  “Hello, my friend,” he replied.

  “But… How… Huh?” I responded as eloquently as a Grecian poet.

  He laughed, and the sound was like an avalanche of stone. “I know, I have some explaining to do. Let’s get it out of the way.” He pointed to the tent entrance where Bryant stood. “You are aware that he pulled the woman you killed from the past, yes?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t…”

  “And you will if you let me continue.” He cleared his throat as if preparing to give a rehearsed speech. “Well, when he did so, he created a ripple in time. It’s one of the reasons my people didn’t change events, only observed. The ripple created a timeline in which you managed to save me. As these things go, I still carry the memories of my death, which make for horrid nightmares.”

  “I still don’t get it,” Kopf said. “How would this ripple affect you in the past when the event happened decades, if not centuries later?”

  “Most certainly centuries,” Krawtesh replied. “I have to assume when I use the word ripple, you are thinking like those created by a stone thrown into the water, yes?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Well, this ripple moved forward and back in time as well as laterally in space. Do you see?”

  “Nope,” Kopf and I said in unison.

  “Jinx,” Kopf said as we fist-bumped.

  “Well, the effect of the ripple moving back touched the events that Goshawk witnessed since he was present when the anomaly happened. The lateral ripples touched both the future and the past, as well as the present. One of the consequences was the timeline in which I lived.”

  “How is it that you can speak our language now?” I felt a serious stress headache coming on. Something told me that messing with time would not end well.

  “That is simple. I spent a long time with the version of you that rescued me. He learned my language, and I learned English. I must say that I am much better at English than you are at Tutoklefth.”

  “I’m happy for you,” I said. “So, why are you here?”

  “Ah, yes, that. It seems that you are destined to right a grievous wrong perpetrated here. The shift in time has taken away a key event that would have better prepared you for the moment. I am here to ensure you can still succeed.”

  “And how are you going to do that?” I asked.

  “Well,” Krawtesh pulled a small pack from his back. It was then I noticed that he wasn’t wearing the robes I had seen him in before. Instead, he wore brown slacks, a khaki shirt, and a brown hat. Even the bag he took off was out of the Gregory Anders films.

  “What’s the deal with the clothes?” I asked. “You're dressed like Gregory Anders from my favorite adventure movies.”

  “Yes, you shared those with me, and I loved them so much that I decided to dress like the Anders fellow.” He reached up and took the brim of his hat in two fingers to tip it at me. “Thank you for that.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I replied. “No problem.” ’Cause, what else was there to say to that?

  Krawtesh went back to the small bag and pulled out a red disk like the one we helped Cade retrieve. “You will need this. It’s the key to all of this mess.” He handed it to me, and my hands moved as if someone else controlled them. I still felt the mind-numbing sting of surprise from seeing an English-speaking Krawtesh. “Now place it there.” He pointed to a spot on the console. “Good. When it finishes booting up, listen to your Lenashal. She will know what to do.”

  “Sure,” I replied woodenly. “Why wouldn’t she?”

  While I waited for the machine, Krawtesh turned to Bryant. “You there, Leneshier.” Bryant looked at him with a quizzical expression on his usually placid face. “Now is the time when you decide your fate. You may move away from the tent and be set free from metal and flesh, or come closer and remain as you are.”

  “You’re saying that thing will set me free if I step back?” Krawtesh nodded. “But that means death?” Krawtesh nodded
again. Bryant stepped into the tent with his face once more emotionless.

  “Okay,” I said. “I think it’s ready to go.”

  “It is ready,” Aspen said. “I do not know how, but I know. Place your hand on the blue square in the center.”

  I reached up, but Krawtesh placed his hand on mine. “Please, give me a moment. I will have to leave before you activate the machine.” He looked at Bryant. “There is something I must say first.”

  “Let me know when you’re ready.”

  Krawtesh walked to Bryant and looked up at the stone-faced machine-man. “You did a foolish thing. One should never interrupt the flow of time, no matter the reason. We are all lucky your actions didn’t bring about the end of everything.” Krawtesh wiped moisture from his left eye. “Now that the unpleasantness is out of the way…” He threw his arms around Bryant’s waist and hugged him tightly. “Thank you. Because of you, my offspring still have a father. I get to see them grow and become adults. That is worth more than you may ever know.”

  The tent grew quiet while Krawtesh held Bryant and wept. I shared a few uncomfortable glances with Kopf, Angela, and Bryant. The weird vibe quickly became boredom and impatience since there seemed to be no end to Krawtesh’s crying. When it was finally over, he let out one final sniffle, then backed away.

  “Apologies,” Krawtesh said. “I told myself I wouldn’t cry. No matter.” He spun to face me. “After I step through the portal, do what she says.”

  Before I could respond, the air shimmered, and the bright tear appeared. Then Krawtesh was gone, and a bright flash ended the portal.

  “Now,” Aspen said. “We can end all of this. Place your hand on the cube.” She sounded annoyed and impatient. If this would end it all, I couldn’t blame her. Completing this mission was why she waited for so long in the crystal where I found her.

  I placed my hand on the square, and it turned purple. Aspen walked me through a complex series of button pushed, dial turns, and signal inscriptions on a touchpad. When I finished, the disk spun. It took on a red glow, which the top spike of the console mimicked.

  “What…” I started to ask.

  Boom!

  The tent blew off the terminal. I fell back and landed on my ass. A red glow shot out of the device and obscured my vision for a long while. By the sound of it, everyone else had fallen over as well.

  The armor I wore reacted by closing the helmet over my head and changing the visor so I could see. Everything had a crimson hue like a naval ship in red alert status, but I could see, nonetheless.

  Sure enough, everyone was on the ground, including Bryant with his multi-legged mechanical body. He shook his head and looked back at me, which verified that Krawtesh was correct that proximity would save him. Or it didn’t kill him, which I guessed amounted to the same thing.

  Red light poured from the console in a steady stream and moved in every direction at once. It continued as I stood and went to Angela. I asked if she was all right, but there was no sound in my helmet or from the speakers that projected my voice. Angela spoke, but I couldn't hear anything from her either.

  A spike of fear slammed into my gut at the prospect of having become deaf. When Angela pointed at her ears and shook her head, I held onto hope that it was temporary. I helped her to her feet and held her close.

  The terminal spat out the crimson light for half an hour. When it finally stopped, everyone blinked their eyes and wiped them to clear their vision. Everyone except Bryant. I suspected he changed his eyesight so he could see like I could.

  “What was that?” Angela asked.

  “Freedom,” Aspen replied. “They are all free now, thanks to all of you.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Standish said. “After the light died, all of the machines stopped and fell to the ground. Then all the Lenashal floated out and blew away in the breeze. There were so many that you could see blue streaks running through the air.

  The scream of an engine drowned out his next words. I looked up, expecting to see a transport come in for a landing. Instead, the ship flew by and dropped something from its cargo hold. The large container floated down on parachutes as the craft kept going.

  “What the hell?” Kopf asked. “Shouldn’t they be coming down here to get us?”

  “I would have thought so,” I replied while keeping my eyes up.

  The dropship vanished from sight as the crate hit the ground. We went to it and disconnected the parachute cords, then let them drift away in the breeze. Once we opened the olive drab plastisteel container, an unwanted voice greeted us.

  “Well, well,” Lupita said. “I’m surprised your pathetic non-aug ass survived, Goshawk.”

  “Good to see you too, Staff Sergeant,” I said in an insincere tone. “Why are we talking through a screen and not in person?”

  “This pains me to say,” Lupita said. “But you’re stuck down there for the foreseeable future.”

  “What?” I joined in the chorus of voices shouting.

  “Lock it up!” Lupita shouted over us all. He pointed at the screen. “Here's the deal, smartass. You figure out a way to get those damn ghosts out of my Marines, and we pick you up. If you can’t, then I lose some damn fine Marines and one useless non-aug. Call me when you make it happen, but not before.”

  The screen went black. The area around the box broke out into shouts and curses. One particularly talented Marine cursed Lupita, his mother, and the horse she rode in on in fewer words than I ever could.

  “What do we do now?” Angela asked as she slid her fingers into mine.

  “You’re not upset?” I looked down at her smiling face.

  “Are you kidding? After all the shit we’ve been through, we get to hang out on a peaceful planet with no hostiles? I get to Galacticflix and chill with my man, and there are no officers around to mess this up for me? This is the best news I’ve heard since we landed.’

  I laughed, and she joined in. Her perspective helped to lighten my mood considerably. While we were abandoned here, that didn’t mean we had to see it that way.

  The next morning I was woken up by a Marine whose name I didn’t know. “Sergeant,” the Private First Class said. “You have to come right now.”

  “What’s wrong?” I pulled open my sleeping bag.

  “I don’t know. I was told to get you and make it fast.”

  “Lead on.” I jumped up.

  He led me to the terminal, which was still on. The red disk was gone, having evaporated or something to that effect when Aspen and I turned off all the machines. Standish and the fireteam leaders all stood around the terminal and looked at the screen.

  “There he is,” Seriph said. “Play it again.”

  As I stepped up to a spot that let me see the screen, I saw the face of a man mixed with that of a machine. “The time has come,” he said. “Board the remaining ship and join us. We are finally joining the One, and we will bring harmony to everyone we know.” The message repeated since no one bothered to shut it off.

  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked.

  “That’s Bozz,” Bryant said. “I don’t remember it all, but the One was our goal. It was what the metal drove us toward. Once there… I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s good. We need to stop him.”

  “How the hell do we do that?” I asked.

  “There.” Seriph pointed to the bottom left corner of the screen.

  A small window displayed another dragon ship. This one was on the ground and still attached to the launch platform.

  “You’re not…” I started to say, but I knew she was.

  “What are we going to do?” Angela asked.

  “We’re going to borrow a dragon-shaped spaceship and go after Bozz and his crew. We need answers, and stopping them is probably a good idea.”

  Kopf let out a long sigh. “So much for my vacation.”

  Read Next

  If you enjoyed this story, you should read the prequel book, PRIME EVIL. It follows some of the SEALs
sent down, before they were ‘missing.’