War of the World Makers

by Reilly Michaels

  End over end, end over end. And then … he stopped.

  His head spun. He breathed heavily.

  He stood nowhere, sat nowhere, simply floated. The air about him was dark and flickering with firelight. Where was he? In what other world? He saw stars, livid stars in the blackest of nights. He watched them, imagining their light piercing him and lifting him, making him one with them. Before he could take comfort, he fell, down and down, and his body hit the earth. The wind was knocked out of him and he gasped.

  "Nai Yarrow Margaret!" he called out within himself.

  No answer.

  He glanced to his left and saw a fire, a big fire, and beyond the fire, white human faces, more than a dozen of them, and even more behind them. They hovered above the flames, as though the severed heads of damned souls cooking for Satan's pleasure.

  Stars, souls, and fire.

  Then he heard a voice, a deep voice of simmering evil:

  "Your beloved Margaret of Anjou cannot help you now. I have my hand on her throat."

  He turned his head to find the voice. It belonged to the smiling Buddha face of Temujin Gur.

  "Your future Czarina is dead," Gur said and grinned at him.

  "What? ... Who is dead?" Zolo asked, still trying to recover his senses.

  "Your fool girlfriend. Have you not seen or heard lately of the vanishing corpse?"

  "What? I ... I have been—"

  "Hiding and scheming as usual. So many schemes, you little Zolo of white flowers and democracy.” Temujin Gur winked at him. The small silver beetle on Gur's face glimmered for a moment and terrible pain stabbed into Zolo's head like a hot needle. Three ghostly lips flew from Gur's mouth, soared down and bit savagely into Zolo's arms and legs with invisible sharp teeth. Zolo cried out and thrashed on the ground.

  "You and your Czarina schemed, and you failed," Gur said. "God of the Blue Sky, I hate fools!"

  The biting lips released and vanished. Zolo gasped and groaned. "No. She cannot be dead. She—"

  "Turn and behold, apostle of Diderot!"

  Gur pointed and Zolo turned his head to right. He saw a side of raw bloody beef. The head was lost in shadow. The body soft, almost boneless

  "No, this is not—"

  "Yes, it is, and you will watch so that you can tell her all about it, from the first scream to the last."

  "What do you mean?" he asked, looking up to face Gur once more.

  "First, stand and see the woggers. Ask them if they wish to vote on this."

  Against his will, Zolo's body jerked him upright to a standing position. He felt dizzy and sick. He lifted his head to stare beyond the large fire and saw that the white heads belonged to a whole clan of naked serfs—men, women and children, several families at least. They stood there in rows, in the cold air beneath the stars, staring at the fire and shivering, gaunt with poverty and beaten down like sad dogs. Their faces fearful, though a few looked resigned, others just glassy eyed. None spoke or moved from the spot where they stood.

  No doubt a spell of Gur's kept them silent, and rooted.

  Zolo glanced around to the horizon and saw only the dark silhouettes of tall fir trees against the night sky. Apparently, Gur had brought them to some secluded place deep in the forest of Anhalt. He looked down again at the corpse. It sickened him, but the thing, the side of bloody meat, seemed so unreal. He walked a few steps to get a better look, and he noticed the dark hair on the head of the thing: long and dark chestnut hair.

  Оверман

  10

  A Necessary Evil – Woggers Must Perish - The Godfellow Nuance

  THE FRENCH AND BRITISH INFANTRY ASSAULT BEGAN AT 7:30 A.M. Along the curved path of an ancient Roman road, from Albert in the west to Bapaume twelve miles to the northeast, 13 divisions of the British Army and 11 divisions of the French Sixth rose up from their trenches, north and south of the River Somme, and moved forward towards the German positions. The Czarina knew that over 20,000 men would die as they marched, upright in their waves, towards the unrelenting fury of the German machine guns. In only one day, those men perished, tens of thousands more wounded. From her studies, she recalled a few words of the speech delivered to the British Yorkshire Light Infantry just before the attack: "When you go over the top, you can slope arms, light up your pipes and cigarettes, and march all the way to Pozières before meeting any live Germans!" The British believed their massive and days-long artillery bombardment would severely weaken the enemy and cut the barbed wire defenses as well, thus allowing a park-like stroll to victory.

  Nothing could have been more of a fantasy.

  After the final bursts of the British creeping barrage ended and their guns went ominously silent, I pulled my confused and shaken younger self out of the bunker and into daylight. Such a bizarre experience I shall never forget. As My Youth saw and heard the war, so did memories of these dark visions light in my brain at once, so that in effect, all became déjà vu even as it took place. I witnessed the same horror seen so many years before, when her age, and this made things even worse. To have lived the nightmare once was bad enough. In fact, I even remembered staring at myself that day, looking for strength. How could I fail the one who needed me most? But such bouts of living with her were so uncomfortable that I resolved never to do it again unless forced by inevitable circumstance. All too odd and disturbing. No one can possibly understand it who has not done it.

  The shouts of officers, a few at first, then more numerous, shook me to attention. All up and down the German line, for miles in either direction, my eyes witnessed tens of thousands of dark helmets pouring from dugouts and bunkers, all swarming to take positions. Many of them set up hundreds of black 08 Maxims, arranging these big water-cooled machine guns in such a manner as to create a zone of forward and enfilade fire that would sweep the enemy ranks in the front and on the sides.

  A morning breeze blew huge billows of white smoke into our faces. We stood upon a wooden walkway implanted in the dirt wall of the trench before our bunker. In a few minutes, far across the chewed and charred remains of a cornfield, I saw them coming, dim and dark in the hazy distance. Rank after rank after rank, so many I could not count. I know that over a hundred thousand French and British rose up and over their trenches that day, and I saw by their colors that the waves of men intent on killing me belonged to an Irish brigade, perhaps two Irish brigades, trudging and stumbling through the shell craters of the past day's bombardment. The ground, now a part of No Man's Land. Nothing remained, not a single stalk; all trees blasted too, uprooted and crushed by fire north and south of the Somme River. For miles in both directions, the earth had been churned to a muddy, tree-shredded stew by the rain of shells and water.

  I saw through the lifting smoke that hundreds of yards of iron barbed wire awaited the Irish. The insane shelling had not cut it, not as Field Marshall Haig had planned. He should have calmed the bombardment at night, sent parties out to check the wires, at least once towards the end of it, but he would not consider even the potential of failure. The arrogant fool!

  The German 08 Maxims barked in chorus well before the Irish reached the iron, at least 20 of them to the nearby left and right of where we stood. They created a superior sheet of metal fire, the likes of which surprised me. Sprays of bullets whined and spit at the Irish from the front and sides. The men out there, being chipped to pieces, hopped and danced and dropped each moment by the score. I heard them, more than a hundred yards away, over the firing. God help me, I did not wish to hear their sad and terrible cries. "Erin go Bragh!" one yelled before a bullet tore out his throat. An Irish officer shouted "Fritz will be runnin' lads!" just before three Maxim bullets knocked him sideways and threw him face first to the ground as if pushed by a rough bully. A young private stopped to pray "Mary Mother hear my—" over his fallen brother from Dublin, and in less than a second, seven bullets spun hot through his body, one passing through to wound a soldier behind him in the leg.

  The Irish brigades, what remained of them, soon
hit the black barbed wire. Many frantically attempted to use their wire cutters, but were themselves cut in half as they tried. Others threw themselves screaming on the big loops, their minds in a state between horror and hysteria, pain and panic. The bullets raked them as they squirmed and struggled, and finally, death posed them for all to see. One of the men, stuck in mid-air, appeared to be praying, his head lifted to the sky, hands pressed before him; and as the days went by, the dead men acquired nicknames that defined their pose: the trapeze artist, the swimmer, the hopscotch man, the jockey, the evening stroll, the ballet dancer, and so forth. The German soldiers found a way to define the ghastly and macabre vision of these posed corpses, to make sense of it and toast "the courage of the ballet dancer" or else they would go mad.

  The mass killing of the Irish was ruthless and efficient. No choice in the matter, for the mere thought of having a steel bayonet buried in you was enough by itself to keep your finger on a trigger. The unreal tragedy of it became clear to my younger self, and again, to me. Once the waves of Irish, and others, had begun their decay to earth, we stared into each other's eyes, and I remembered that moment and became myself in the memory, staring into my own soul; and she asked me, "Is there more of this?" and I said, yes, much more, and then another war to follow, and more still, the finest men and women, the most courageous and kind will die, and among their number, millions of the Jewish people, Russians, and so many others, meeting death in ways that cannot be spoken of.

  * Оверман *

  IN THE NO MAN'S LAND OF CRATERS AND DEATH, on the field south of Guillemont at dusk, the Princess and Czarina strolled, the day's charge against the German lines having been reduced to smoke and corpses. They spoke of many things while the piteous cries of the wounded created one long moan in the background. Freddie asked if power had become a burden, and Catherine answered yes. "In truth, it will never cease to be a burden," she said. Power meant responsibility, choices between life and death, good and evil, and all in between. And now, a "necessary evil" would be staged early tomorrow morning at The Battle of The Somme in an attempt to prevent a greater evil later, and Freddie remarked, "I will not take part in evil of any kind."

  "In truth, you will, or you will not be me," Catherine said, her face cold as No Man's Land.

  "I will not be you then."

  "Then you will not be here, and this war will go on without you."

  "And how will our necessary evils make it any better?" her younger self asked. To the south, a new bombardment by the French had begun, the distant quaking of it rolling through the darkening blue air.

  "Is it evil for the Germans to defend themselves? Or for the French or British to attack? This is French soil we stand on," Catherine said.

  Her younger self hesitated before answering. "I cannot say. They do what they must."

  "And we do what we must, no?"

  "But they are driven by orders, and a belief in rightness of their cause."

  "And we are driven by choice and rightness of cause. Are we evil then because we are not actually taking orders as would soldiers?" Catherine turned and clutched Freddie by the shoulders and stared into her eyes as the voice of the French guns grew louder. "After this World War I you find yourself in now, a much greater evil will arise in Europe in the 1930's. It will be led by a German political radical, and through fear and lies he will conquer the German people and begin a second world war to conquer everyone else. He will eventually be defeated, but only after tens of millions of deaths, and in dying he will fuel an American war machine that will grow to become Godfellow's army of the 21st century."

  "From America? I thought they—"

  "The war machine corporations will control America's government in Washington and bleed the country to the bone, and with undercover doses of Godfellow's magic, this symphony of evil will rise to conquer Earth itself. Humankind as we know it will perish."

  "But we will kill Master Godfellow before that happens ... or will we?"

  "Saravastra's move to alter the Battle of The Somme will lure his forces to restore the time stream. Then we will kidnap him from the future, as I told you while you cooled in that block of Temujin's ice."

  "But how can we be sure the Saravastra plan will work well enough to lure his forces?"

  "The plan is sound, and simple. Once the German army begins a surprise counteroffensive here at Guillemont at 3 A.M. tomorrow morning, it will break through and turn north, rolling up the British right flank. The French will be cut off and unable to support. This victory will end effective British presence in France and allow the Germans to—"

  WHUMP! BOOOOOOM!

  A shell suddenly landed nearby and both of them were showered with dark bits of mud and gore. She continued. "... allow the Germans to dominate the war here on the western front."

  WHUMP WHUMP BOOOOOOOM!

  The French shelling was now joined by British batteries closer to their position, faraway across No Man's Land. Freddie looked confused and jittery in the presence of the shelling. Who wouldn't? She said, "But if the Germans win, then—"

  Catherine interrupted, "The plan calls for the Russians to drive the eastern front into Germany and force the German high command ... to retire from France." WHUMP! "In the long run, a peace between the allies and Germany will be made ..." WHUMP! "Germany will remain prosperous and without Allied treaty restrictions." A shell landing only twenty yards away kicked body debris into the air around them. Catherine felt her stomach lurch. "In short, the Saravastra time-war strategy cancels conditions that lead to the rise of ..." A fierce whine of shell cut her off.

  WHUMP! BOOOOOOM! SHREEEEEEE!

  A violent whistling of shrapnel. Catherine continued quickly for more explanation was needed and she sensed a new shower of shells on the way. "Assuming the Saravastra plan works at the Somme, War Tracker will alert beast Godfellow and his Black Army Corps. Units of Dio Soldati will arrive to remove the threat to his version of history. At this point, a Nexus Zone will be formed."

  "And then we kidnap the World Maker?"

  WHUMP! BOOOOOM! WHUMP! More debris and mud rained down. Thick clouds of smoke began to obscure them, dark purple in the light of dusk, hiding their faces for a few moments. Despite a headache blooming into her skull with pounding force, Catherine said, "We will kidnap him from his headquarters in Dubai, via the chrono-defense satellites, to the Nexus Zone. Before the monster can blink, our aria will reroute him to Mars, and then—"

  WHUMP! BOOOOOM! ... WHUMMMMMP!

  "So you know for certain these satellite things are talking to War Tracker?"

  "They watch events between moments, hours between seconds, as here in the Nexus Zone. If I am right though, we can—“

  "What in Beelzebub's name is a Nexus Zone anyway? Zolo talked about it, and said—"

  WHUMP! BOOOOOOOOOOM! SHREEEEEEE!

  Enough! A frustrated Catherine sang a brief burst of aria to temporarily slow time, for she knew she must explain to the nervous Freddie—whose right arm had just been clipped and bloodied by a whizzing fragment of shell casing—a few crucial things about the Nexus Zone:

  "Tempo de ser lento!" (Time be slow!).

  A new rain of smoking debris slowed to a halt ten feet above their heads. She took a deep breath and began, noticing that half of Freddie’s face was hidden by a frozen puff of purple smoke.

  "The Zone … it’s an invention of the World Makers, a time-space battlefield that prevents our war from devastating the landscape and changing history in an unwanted manner."

  Her blinking youth listened as she explained that battles took place within seconds, usually between the first millisecond of the first second and the last millisecond of the next. Within this tiny space of time, hours could go by, even days; and if Master Godfellow lost, he and War Tracker could develop a new strategy within moments and launch it. For example, if they failed to stop the German counteroffensive, they might create a British counteroffensive in the north that would turn the German right flank just as the G
ermans were turning the British right. Whatever it took, for as long as it took. No end of seconds within which to fight, no end of possible Nexus Zones. But there was always the threat of magical Tao energy becoming exhausted, or too many combat units destroyed or spell captains dead, and the horror of an Extinction Event always loomed.

  Freddie said, "I heard Eréndira speak of it. I don't understand. I feel like such a child."

  "It's hard to grasp," Catherine said. "Time suddenly resents being started and stopped again, rather like a horse ridden with too much whip. It throws its rider to the ground and returns to the stable. Does that make sense? ... Master Paganini believes the Tao responsible. Edison Godfellow believes it to be Ahriman."

  "And so many die?"

  "Whole divisions of black armor and scores of magical beings can be scattered to the past, far beyond the Nicholas Line, but that isn't what kills them. Whenever an Extinction Event occurs, the Time defense machines of the World Makers high above the Earth burn all victims of the Event, whoever and whatever they may be, and hurl them to the Cenozoic era, deep in Earth's past to prevent any possible contamination to history ... It isn't kind. We've lost tens of thousands. Godfellow's Cadre of The Overman has lost nearly a hundred thousand."

  "What about us? Could we be killed in that way?" Freddie asked.

  Catherine decided to answer honestly. "Yes, I believe we can."

  She watched her younger self pause to gather courage, shell flashes and a thick haze frozen behind her. She watched her lips and heard her say, "I saw our death, at the hands of mechanical monsters in the Himalayas."

  Catherine instantly recalled herself asking that question. "Yes, I remember it also," she said. She really did not wish to speak of it. The issue understandably made her uncomfortable. The thought of being helpless and ripped to shreds by a Fracas Machine was nerve wracking. "I do not know it if is true, or an illusion. I know from history that we live as a famous Czarina, and we will be known as Catherine The Great, but it is possible that Czarina is not really us."