by JT Dylan
The Ox re-evaluated his position, and threw the spear down. Spread his arms wide and looked the American directly in the eyes. Spoke to him firmly but quietly.
'Niye takpah tokahe. Mak U takuon takuwe.' You attacked first. Give me a reason why.
The Native American's expression wavered, but he doubled the tension in the bow and aimed it directly at the Ox's large chest.
'Wakin sni takuon wanasa pi wa maka ska.' Need no reason to hunt animal.
The Ox's hand throbbed. Droplets of blood spattered onto the sand below. He licked a single bead of dark black blood from his finger tip.
'Sni wa maka ska. Wakatanka.' I'm not an animal. I am a god.
The coppery taste of his own blood exploded in his mouth, and the Ox dissolved out of existence. His clothes fell to the floor in a heap. The Native American cried out in surprise and stepped back. He stepped forward and prodded the clothes with his bow. A few moments passed. The Indian whirled around in all directions. The Ox man was nowhere. He stepped back another step. Behind him the air shifted and grew warm. The Ox's naked ghost shimmered into a solid entity. His eyes empty, his face a mask of pain. He seemed a little older. His features drawn and haggard, his hair touched with flecks of white. He fell to the floor with an in-human scream. The American whirled around in terror. Emptied his bladder and ran faster than he had ever run before. The Ox arched his back in spasm and howled at the sun with pain and fury. His screams echoed against the cliffs, and only the crashing of waves answered his mournful cries.
On the far side of the beach, high on a cliff top, a young American Indian girl on horseback looked down upon the beach. She had watched as the white man vanished like a spirit and re-formed into a howling banshee. The men he had slain had not been of her tribe but they were her neighbours. They were strong men. Warriors. The white ghost had made fools of them and defeated the last one with magic. She would report back to the Grey Wolf. She had finally found what he had spoken of since she was a child. She had found the Buffalo God. Grey Wolf would be pleased with her news. She clicked her tongue and dragged the horse around. She willed the horse to go as fast as it could. They had a lot of ground to cover before nightfall.
TWELVE
Jack stood in the doorway and pumped his fist in a clenching motion. A trickle of dark red blood dripped from the tiny incision he'd made on his forearm into a small canteen. He saw the old man and the boy fussing over the dog in the distance. They'd tied it to the usual post, an ever-faithful guardian of their property. It made Jack uneasy that they were spending so long with it.
Jack shook the canteen, heard the sloshing of liquid at the bottom. Enough for an emergency at least. He resisted the temptation to suck his wound clean and plugged the canteen shut. He strapped it to his belt along with the makeshift knife he'd been given by the old man. He pitched his hat forward and rolled down his sleeve. The blood was already congealing and the cut would be camouflaged by the dark sleeve even if it bled a while longer. He took one final look at the wooden dwelling and made his way toward his new travelling companions.
'All set?' The old man's eyes were clenched shut against the bright sunlight. He ruffled the dog's head one last time and whispered something in its ear. The dog licked its master's face and the old man wiped away a tear. He cleared his throat and walked away briskly. The boy shrugged at Jack and hugged the dog goodbye.
'See you later Barkuss.' The dog had already lost interest and was chasing a fat bee around the pole. The boy chuckled and grabbed Jack's hand. They walked on after the old man, who was already at the far end of the field, striding ahead with purpose.
'How far are we going mister?' The boy's nose was crinkled and his eyes blinked against the sun as he craned his neck up toward Jack.
'As far as it takes son.'
The boy thought about this for a moment. 'You're not from around here are you?'
Jack looked down at the boy as they walked. 'Anyone ever tell you you're a real smart kid?' The boy just shrugged his shoulders.
'How fast can you run?' Jack pointed at the old man in the distance. 'Want to see if you can outrun an old horse like me?'
The boy grinned, and took off, laughing all the way. Jack smiled and looked back at the farm. The dog was nothing but a dot in the distance. Far behind it, over the mountains, dark clouds rolled in. Jack pulled his coat tighter and turned his collar up. Up ahead, the boy had caught up to the old man and was clinging to him. They walked on together, away from the coming storm. And Jack followed.
THIRTEEN
President Ben Freeman strapped himself into one of two open and illuminated pods. He closed the larger glass hatch, leaving only the service tray open so he could speak to the General.
'Christ Jim, let's go. 60 seconds and counting. Get the hell in there.'
The General flicked a final switch and closed the control panel he was working on. Instead of moving forward he stepped back and away from the time pods. 'I'm sorry Ben. I had no choice.'
The President took a second to realise what was going on. He touched his palm to the door release mechanism. The door remained closed. An electronic voice spoke over the speaker system. 'Unauthorized personnel. Please begin double clearance procedure to exit pod.' The President looked directly below him for the manual pod release. He tore the safety straps off and yanked on the yellow and black lever. Again, nothing. No way out.
'Unauthorized personnel. Please begin double clearance procedure to activate pod.'
The President's mind raced through what he knew of the security system's details. He kept an eye on the General as he did so. His old friend was backtracking slowly away toward the barricaded exit.
'They promised not to hurt you Ben. They just need you out of the way until they find Jack. He's putting us all at risk. He's changing things.'
'Dammit Jim, did that synthetic look like she was coming here to cuff me? Think, soldier! We're both dead men here. Get in that fucking pod and get us both the hell out of here.'
'I'm sorry Ben. It's too late. They're here.'
Ben heard boots on the other side of the door. Ten men, maybe more.
Ben let his mind drift away to a calmer place. Let the solution come to him instead of chasing after it. He was in a quiet white space. He saw the stars winking at him far above. The soothing voice repeated that he was an unauthorized personnel. The voice knew he was there because he was on camera. He was being analysed by A.I. Security cameras. He was unauthorized because he was the highest class threat level. He was the President of the New United States. Too high a risk of kidnap. He needed double clearance just to take a leak in this place. The pistol in his belt made it difficult to lean back comfortably and the President's focus switched to the new irritation. He snapped instantly back to attention, grabbed the gun and aimed it through the service tray at the General.
The General stopped moving. His hand hovered inches from unlocking the blocked exit.
'You won't kill me Ben.'
'I don't have to kill you Jim. Just shoot you.' The President fired. The bark of the old revolver was deafening in the enclosed space. The General sat down hard on the floor. He looked disbelievingly at the red flower blooming on his white shirt. Gut shot. Ben grimaced at the sight. It would hurt like hell until the medics got a hold of him, but he'd live to bitch about it. Besides, it would protect him from implications of collusion.
The electronic voice boomed again. 'Suspension of Presidential status, effective immediately, pending internal inquiry into attempted murder charge of General Jim Daniels. Virtual Witness iD: AI_324x300. The Vice President to assume President's role pending manual verification.'
So far so good. Ben hoped the security loophole still existed. He shut the service tray hatch and strapped himself in. Checked his blood levels, flicked two oxygen switches to manual and adjusted the pressure of the pod. Ben squatted down and held onto the release handle. Outside, the sound of a laser cutter fired up and a thin smoking line cut horizontally across the top of the labor
atory entrance. It was now or never. Closing his eyes, Ben heaved on the lever. A hissing sound filled the Pod and the undercarriage rumbled beneath him. The voice spoke clearly over the machinery.
'Elite Number 1003, Ben Freeman, cleared for launch. Initiating thrusters.' Ben blew out a sigh of relief and tightened his straps. Now that he was no longer President his clearance level had automatically revoked back down to its previous lower level. President Ben Freeman may be under investigation, but Elite Soldier Ben Freeman wasn't. And Elite Soldier Ben Freeman had a Code Green clearance. Awarded for outstanding acts of bravery in the line of duty. Outside the glass pod, the General crawled away from the double doors, seeking the shelter of an upturned desk. The pod sunk down into the floor compartment. Before being entombed in the darkness of the torpedo tube, Ben saw the weakened lab door implode and black smoke pour in. Then the pod's top section became flush with the lab floor, there was a loud clank, a sudden rush of air and a sharp drop into free-fall. Then nothing but silence.
The pod's boosters kicked in and spun the pod around to its horizontal flight position. Through the front panel of glass, Ben watched as the monstrosity of the space station shrank away. Everywhere else he looked, he saw only stars.
FOURTEEN
The man closest to the Ox woke up with a broken shoulder and a broken face. He shook the red stars from his vision and grabbed a blade with his good arm. He took in the scene quickly. He saw that the large white man had been robbed of his clothes and was rolling in pain. Good. He would die a swift death. The white buffalo had beaten two of his men, and frightened away another, but not him. Never him. Big Hawk was the strongest of all men. He had killed stronger buffalo than this by himself.
The Ox clawed at his own face, his mind tearing itself apart as the neurons struggled to re-balance. Big Hawk positioned himself behind the Ox and grabbed him by the hair. The Ox screamed in rage, but Big Hawk held on, using only the forearm muscles of his damaged arm. He brought the knife down under the white buffalo's throat and screeched at the heavens. The Ox's eyes rolled in his head. He fought to clear his mind. He felt the blade's edge cut into his neck. He focused everything he had into one planned motion. A single, solid jerk upwards. He put his whole body and mind into the move, ready to smash his head into the Indian's face. He'd likely get cut in the process but it was the best chance he had. He tensed a fraction of a second before the manoeuvre, and Big Hawk sensed it. He pushed the Ox's face deep into the wet sand. The Ox's mind shattered into a thousand pieces and he could only watch numbly as the waves crashed onto the shore in the distance. His internal pain filled his mind with darkness.
The Ox used his last reserves to twist around clumsily. He would at least look his killer in the eye. Blood from his neck wound smeared across his face as he did so.
Big Hawk raised his knife high in the air. The Ox licked his lips in fear and watched the Indian plunge the blade down for the kill. Then there was nothing.
FIFTEEN
Ben wrestled with the pod's controls as it bucked and weaved through the asteroid field. He was already soaked through with sweat and his heart thumped inside his chest like a jackrabbit. He knew it was nothing to do with the capsule's thermostat or the exertion of manual control. Ben Freeman was terrified of flying. Always had been, always would be.
The Space Station was nothing more than a silent line of bright lights in the distance. His oxygen levels dipped dramatically as the craft was struck by one then another large fragment of rock. He saw a thin trail of white gas drift past his window. Great. It was the second time it had happened in as many minutes. He flicked the shut-offs for the remaining supply and diverted the air along the last remaining emergency channel. The gauges levelled out. His mind tried to race back through what had just unfolded on the ship and their implications but his combat training helped him block it out. Reminiscing could come later, soldier. Right now there was more than enough to do to get out of this in one piece. He tried to relax for the long journey toward Earth. He let his mind wander across the control panels.
His blood levels showed a lower concentration than he hoped of the catalyst nano-cells. A high percentage were dormant by way of design of course. These were for the return journey. Activated only when orally re-ingested, they would bring him closer to home and were the exact opposite of the ones that were initialized in his blood stream right now. The dormant ones, when activated through consumption, would act as blockers to the initial launch catalyst. Each dosage would bring him a step closer back to his own time. A large enough dose of blockers would bring him right back to the present. It was all theoretical of course. Earth was currently in no shape for a time traveller to leap back to. Only a small percentage of the Earth was now hospitable at all, thanks to huge thermo-sealed colonies. And the leaper's safety nets, the oceans, were all unpredictable no-go zones since the war. Their new temperature ranges fluctuated constantly. A man could boil or freeze to death as soon as he arrived. There was also the additional complication of consuming such a large dosage of blockers. The recovery period from such a dose would render the traveller incapacitated for a lengthy window of time, leaving him particularly vulnerable to external threats. This brought Ben's thoughts crashing back to his old friend the General. His mind wandered to their first meeting. How could a man with such vision suddenly become so blind?
Outside the pod, the thrusters flickered intermittently, constantly correcting the flight path at the macroscopic level. Another fist sized rock bounced lazily into their path, scraping against the underbelly. It took out two primary sensors before slicing open a protected section of hose further along the hull.
For the third and final time during the flight, an air line ruptured, and the white exhaust quietly hissed out in a thin trail, undetected by the disabled CPU.
SIXTEEN
General Daniels had always been a great thinker. The young Jim Daniels that Ben had first met had been a brilliant young mind who had joined the battlefield simply to satisfy a brain that longed to excel. No longer satisfied with books and theory he had an all-consuming urge to take part in the real world. He had known he was the best he could be mentally, and wanted to match that achievement physically. His peers and superiors had tried to bring him down, to break him at every turn, and they had failed. Ben had seen this at first hand and had witnessed the man's mental strength. His sheer will power triumphed over his physical limitations.
It had been Daniels' brain child to build the pods that would deliver a time traveller safely to a position just above the poisonous Earth before he leaped. It was such a simple yet elegant solution. Typical of the General's lateral thinking.
The General, a newly qualified Elite back then, and barely a day after graduating, had seen three men from his old platoon killed in as many hours. Time-leaping was in its infancy and huge rudimentary installations allowed the test soldiers to leap back a week or so at a time. Missions were hashed together on the battlefield perimeters under heavy fire.
The three doomed volunteers had leaped back one after the other. The original mission had been trivial on paper. Leap back, recon the enemy position three days prior and go dark. Then simply wait out the ensuing battle before reporting back at the initial launch point. To the scientists at the launch site, the soldiers would disappear momentarily before returning on foot moments later with the information required. For the soldier it meant a headache and covert foot patrols for a week, before catching up naturally with their regular timeline, barely a week older for their efforts.
When the first volunteer failed to report back he was listed as MIA. Another was quickly sent with the additional secondary mission to recover information about the first. When a third had to be sent with a similar briefing, Daniels was the first to work out what had happened.
He had approached his superiors and explained his theory. They brought in a makeshift scanner-digger and eventually found the soldiers' pulped bodies intertwined barely 3 feet below ground some hundred yards away from the laun
ch site. Their limbs crushed into a black soup by the immense pressure of rock and clay. Recognisable only by their DNA samples, the men had all been awarded posthumously for their bravery and the details of their demise quickly erased from all records.
Under the stresses of war the scientists had overlooked the fact that the landscape had shifted during the last onslaught. Terrain had been levelled by both sides, craters had formed, plates had shifted. The elevation of the launch site itself was down an average of ten feet per week. Following such an oversight, combined with the fact that they didn't have a clue as to why the soldiers had landed some distance away, the scientists had little choice but to agree to listen to the young Daniels' detailed proposals.
Daniels was awarded full temporary co-operation by the military. Word had gotten out and orders from above ensured his access to help improve the Leap Project. He was transferred to the Darka Medi-Labs, albeit under the watchful eyes of his superiors.
Early prototypes had been modified hover drones. Floating well above the margins of error the time-pods had been flown above the terrain, the subjects equipped with parachutes for a safe arrival. Of course it quickly became apparent that nothing could leap back with the soldier, including parachutes or safety nets. A couple of broken legs and some lateral thinking later, Daniels initiated testing above the swamplands. Success rates were higher but still not perfect. The injury rates were found to be directionally proportional to the timespan leaped. If the timeframe became too great, the soldiers were sometimes found to land several metres away from the water's edge along the Earth's axis, their legs shattered on the hard ground. This broke Daniels's heart and he re-doubled his efforts. Men were being hurt because of his shortcomings. He went into a dark mood of isolation. He cancelled all further testing for a period of 48 hours as he pored over the research data. His furious superior officers became agitated and frustrated. They demanded he continued testing, regardless of collateral damage. Their war couldn't wait a single second, let alone two days. They threatened him with dishonourable expulsion, arrest, and much worse. He stared them all out, stood his ground and eventually went above their heads. After being passed from one department to the next he finally got through to the head office. He explained to the company chairman's aide directly that he only needed two days and he would have their Leap Project ready for action. Promised them safe leaps of several years instead of weeks. All they had to do was give him two days, uninterrupted by political and physical threats or bureaucratic red tape. The company man thanked him for the refreshingly frank and brutally honest telephone call and said someone would be in touch.