Starship Paradiso (Helltroopers Book 3)

by Isaac Stone

  “Target acquired,” Viktor, announced to them. “Shall I commence firing?”

  “Fire away,” Ash and Barbara Ann spoke at the same time.

  This time the effects of the weapons were instant. Huge chunks of the planetoid were blasted off the surface as the rest of it began to heat up and melt. Ash watched as the mining operation was reduced to twisted metal from a direct hit by a nuclear blast. Large cracks began to appear in the surface as more energy was pumped into it from the EMP cannons. In minutes, the planetoid on the other side was turned to a cloud of dust from the combined firepower of the Paradiso.

  “Target destroyed,” Viktor announced.

  “I wondered how long that would take,” Ester said from the right side of Kris.

  “Ester?” Kris said to her. “I thought you were dead? I saw you killed back on Purgatory.” For some reason it wasn’t a big shock to her the only other woman in Team Omega was back.

  “A million upon million different versions of each moment in time,” Ester told her. “Do you have any idea how long one day is in all our realities? I don’t. The cycle is far from over. Apocalypse is delayed this time. One of the side effects was my return. Don’t you feel the shift?”

  Kris shook her head and the ship began to glow. It was transparent and she could see all the possible futures and pasts, which coalesced around them. She saw herself dead from the attack on Inferno Station. She saw herself turning down Ash’s offer years ago to become part of Team Omega. Ester became transparent and she could see the thoughts and lives of her swirl around in the infinite boundaries of time.

  It wasn’t just her. Makulah saw himself back on the Earth he’d never left. Theo saw a completely different time line where he stood next to the wife he never had. Jack screamed obscenities at the woman he caught in bed with another man. None of it made the least bit of sense, but it all felt real to them as the control room shifted through a million different scenes and visions.

  “We are outside the circles of time,” Barbara Ann spoke. “This won’t last very long. Relatively, that is.”

  “The Zhang troops are at the base of the mountain,” a sergeant told Ash across from the field table as they looked at troop movements on the plain. “In two days they’ll be at the Blue Lotus Fortress and we don’t have enough troops to stop them in time.” He appeared to be frustrated.

  “What about the Sultanates?” Ash questioned him. The uniform he wore was strange, but familiar at the same time. “I thought they were our allies this time. Did I miss something?”

  “Are you going out with that creep?” Kris heard from her roommate. Her platform cork shoes were in the corner.

  “I don’t see why not,” she told her. “He’s got tickets to the Rolling Stones concert in the park. What could go wrong?” She snuffed out a cigarette next to her bunk and wished the college term was over.

  “They’ve got Hell’s Angels as security, you idiot!” she snapped at her. “It’s a recipe for a disaster and you know it. You party too much and need to quit smoking that dope!”

  Simon Haddo stood in the college library and looked at the book. He’d pulled it out of the stacks shelf after he checked with the librarian to make sure it was still there. The nice lady showed him exactly where it was when he came into this part of the library. Hard to tell if these books were still on the shelf with the college removing the chains that held the older ones in place. They claimed there was a new system to make these old books safe. Haddo didn’t believe it would ever protect them, not with that old codger they caught last year who snuck by the matrons and claimed his daughter worked here. They grabbed him before he could leave with a first edition Edgar Allan Poe. The book had to be worth three hundred dollars, maybe more.

  He, on the other hand, had used his connections to the medical school across town to gain admission to this women’s college and find out whether or not it had the book he wanted. Haddo knew the old security guard who walked around with the big clock strapped to him would be around any minute. They gave him an hour to go into this closed reserve stacks alone and no more. He wasn’t allowed to take any bags or cases on with him and was forced to leave his coat behind. The library staff took no chances these days.

  Just where did that woman go?

  His hands shook as he held the book. This was it. The diary that Dr. John Dee hid in the other trunk, the one they didn’t open. It too had a false bottom. Here was the key to using the tablets. Here was the correct cipher for the Enochian angelic code. And no one knew about it but him. Haddo was giddy with the knowledge.

  He looked around and found no one in the aisle of the book stacks but him. Haddo walked over to a table near the window and sat down. He turned the pages and tried not to whoop with excitement. This book would make him famous. Better yet, it would make him rich. All of these entities had self-awareness, but you could bribe them. The journal told how. It gave the right way to do it and how to protect yourself. As he figured out, Dee continued his studies in communication with the angels long after he kicked Edward Kelly out of his house.

  No pen and no paper with him. Dammit, someone would find this book beside him and he’d never be able to take advantage of it. It was the story of his bitter, unfortunate life. All he did was copy engravings in a lawyer’s office. If only he could use what Dee had recorded in this book.

  Well, it wouldn’t hurt to try a few of the invocations. They would at least tell him how useless or not the book was. He turned to the page that had the Sigillum Inferno on display and caught his breath. Was this thing dangerous? Only one way to find out. Haddo began to read the words below it aloud in a quiet voice.

  The guards never saw him again. When they went to fetch him, Simon Haddo and the book was gone. The college president threatened to fire all the watchmen, but didn’t.

  No one ever saw Simon Haddo again. At least not in the 19th century.

  As Haddo watched, the endless universes shift around him; he realized the focal point was this book. He reached in his coat, pulled out the old leather volume, and sat it down in front of his desk. There it was, the very words Dee had written in the angelic language hundreds of years ago. The correct words, not the ones that everyone else found. That copy was incomplete and designed to through people off the path. This one, on the other hand, had the real unified tablet inside it. He had the wax original of the Sigillum Inferno. The fools at the corporation copied it and thought they could use it as protection against the demons from the abyss. They’d learned too late, how stupid they were.

  He looked up at the rainbow patterns, which arched across the control room. This reality shifted right before him. The current universe was in the middle of shifting to a new cycle. This event wasn’t supposed to take place for another 3500 years, subjective time. If the cycle was reaching an end, there was something bad wrong.

  It had to be the damn book. It was the only explanation. The gate was destroyed, they were on the inside of the abyss and he’d brought the book with the correct symbols inside with him. This was what those creatures wanted. They wanted the information in his book that only he possessed. They were on the reverse side of the aethers, where the black onion peels pulled energy away. This was what the corporation had tried to harness.

  They were fools to try and neither Babalon/Barbara Ann/Ash/Horus could do a thing about it. They stood there and watched time warp right around them. He knew what was crawling out of its cave and headed right toward them all. It wanted the book and the information Dee recorded all those centuries ago. Too bad, he had the copy and wasn’t about to give it up.

  There was one way to make sure it never got its tentacles on this book. Haddo pulled a bowl up to him left over from lunch and dropped the book inside. He lit a match and touched it to the parchment. Flames began to rise from the manuscript and smoke poured into the air. Everyone around him were caught up in their own mirror images and paid him no attention. No one suspected what was taking place.

  Simon Haddo smiled and watched
the book continue to burn. That thing would never have it. He was pleased with himself; at least he’d managed to do one thing right. Too bad no one paid him any attention.

  Right up until the moment the entire universe went black.

  15

  At the bottom of the abyss, beyond the gate, sat Chronozon.

  He’d been in this particular place for a long time; he couldn’t remember where he’d been posted before. This was about as bad as assignments went. They’d sent him here several millennia ago for messing up something big; he couldn’t remember what it was. But he was forced to stay here until another posting opened up. He didn’t care at this point, it was a lousy universe he was supposed to monitor, but there were worse places where he could be sent. It was something to keep in mind.

  He thought about the universe where all intelligent life was based on silicone. It was an interesting assignment, but nothing much happened there. Then there was the place where everything evolved into a form of intelligent bat squid. Not bad creatures just lacked the ability to see outside the pools where they spawned.

  This time he was stuck in a place dominated by hairy mammalians. They got around a lot, since they breathed oxygen and could keep themselves warm. But their reproductive cycles were long and they didn’t breed very often. On the other hand, they had long lifespans and when they did breed, the effects were catastrophic. It was amazing they weren’t terminated early on in a nuclear exchange.

  He rolled away from the desk and looked at his wristwatch. It was almost time for those two representatives to make an appearance. Always, it came down to one of each sex. This was the standard operating procedure and it extended across the universes. He pulled out his operations manual and turned to the page that showed him what to expect. A number of them had been through his office before, but never at this level.

  He turned to the mirror on the wall and adjusted his tie. “Oh, well,” he sighed. “If I can’t come to an agreement with them I get another transfer. Perhaps this time to some place with beings who can teleport or read each other’s minds. These hairy beasts…”

  He poured himself a cup of coffee from the machine. One thing nice about this universe, they did have some fine beverages. Too bad, he couldn’t take any with him to the next assignment. Chronozon took a sip of his mug and let the smooth flavor roll inside his mouth. Another thing he liked about this universe was the bodies. These hairy animals did have a good set-up and he didn’t have to train much before the posting.

  The intercom on his desk buzzed. This must be the two now.

  “Mr. Chronozon,” the voice of his secretary squawked. “There are two representatives of the human race here to see you.” Right on schedule.

  He put his cup down on the desk and touched the “send” button. “I’ve been expecting them, Narla,” he transmitted to her, “send them in.” he leaned back in the chair again and waited.

  The glass door, which read “Mr. Chronozon” from the other side, opened and the two representatives of this universe entered the room.

  “Please have a seat,” Chronozon gestured to the male, the one called Ash, as he went to the couch. The female of the species, called Barbara Ann, followed him and closed the door behind both.

  Chronozon was a bit surprised at how young the man appeared. It was a bit odd as this culture and civilization valued age, and while he wasn’t a fresh faced adolescent, there was more life ahead of him than behind. The woman was a good five years older. The man wore some kind of uniform and the woman a revealing set of clothes. It didn’t matter to him; the meeting was to decide the future of humanity, not fashion statements.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Chronozon asked the two. “I put a fresh pot on not five minutes ago. We’ve got cream and sugar if you need any.”

  “We don’t have time to drink coffee,” Barbara Ann told him. “Five minutes ago, the Paradiso starship annihilated the slip stone operation inside the Hell Gate. We were on our way out when everything went black.”

  “Are you working with those demons who tried to kill us?” Ash demanded from him. “What about the corporation, are you EAC?” He seemed to be very angry.

  “Please calm down, Mr. Wednesday,” Chronozon told him. “I understand why you are so upset, but you don’t have to get belligerent. I should be the one angry. You blew-up an expensive production unit, which I won’t be able to replace for a long time. You have no concept how much effort went into building that asteroid.” He tried no to grind his teeth.

  “You were behind that slip stone production?” Barbara Ann snapped at him. “I guess this explains everything. All those power packs, which were supposed to feed into the Hell Beacons, were made possible by you. Is this what the abyss was up to? To destroy this reality?”

  “The same slip stones which are ensouled with demons can be charged with angels, as always it is you humans who end up choosing which way to go,” Chronozon told her. “Now it will take me another millennia to build a new one. Maybe two. Some of those parts you can’t buy anymore, so I’ll have to find a shop that can make them.”

  Ash didn’t know what to make of Chrononzon. He’d expected a demonic being with long teeth and a shifting form in the bottom of a burning pit. Instead, he was ushered into a room in an office building and introduced to a small balding man in a three-piece suit. Ash recalled Haddo’s explanation of why the devils and angel armies were so cliché, and suddenly he felt horribly curious as to what this office and the denizens of it might actually look like beyond the limits of his human imagination.

  Right after the light returned, Ash and Barbara Ann found themselves in the waiting room of an old office building. In front of them was an older middle-aged lady who chewed gum and sat behind a typewriter. She looked up from her typing and asked if they were Ash and Barbara Ann. When Ash told them they were, the woman made a call from her desk and asked them to be seated. They only sat a few minutes when she called their name and took them to the inner office.

  “You have no right to interfere with the system from where we came,” Barbara Ann thundered at him. “I demand you return us and the people we were with to the point where we entered the gate.” She put both fists on her thighs and glared at him.

  “You have a strange sense of justice,” Chronozon said to her behind his round spectacles, “Ms. Babalon or whatever you call yourself. The universe you inhabit is only as stable as the most advanced civilization inside it. When a universe becomes unstable, it must be temporarily quarantined from all the others. The beings who inhabit the system from where I took you have developed nuclear weapons, hyperspace travel and occult science. They cannot be allowed to infect other systems. We’ve had enough trouble with other civilizations. There must be a conservation of energy across creation and they are in danger of destroying the balance. Besides, they summoned my help and I was forced to answer their call. Was it my fault they asked for too many demons and not enough angels? I merely gave them what they asked for.”

  “But we’ve destroyed your slip stone production planetoid, the Hell Beacons, the hell gate and you no longer have any power inside our universe,” Ash pointed out. “So just let us go and we’ll make sure it never happens again.”

  “How can I be sure?” Chronozon responded, as he made notes on a pad in front of him. “It happened once, it could happen again.”

  “I made it all possible,” Barbara Ann announced. “Remove me and you won’t have to worry about it again.”

  Ash turned to her in confusion. “What did you mean?” he asked.

  “The book,” she told Chrononzon. “I showed Haddo how to find the book. I was the librarian who gave it to him. I was in her form when it all happened centuries ago.”

  “You’ll have to remove me as well,” Ash announced as he took her hand. “We will both have to go.”

  “That might just fly,” Chronozon said as he picked up a three ring binder from the desk and flipped through it. “Yes, it’s right here under ‘Exemptions’. Great, it buys
me some bonus points too. I hope you will enjoy the place they’ll send you because it hasn’t rained there in 2000 years. Good thing is that you are allowed to deliver one final message before you go.”

  “I know what to say and who to say it to,” Barbara Ann told him.

  “Don’t I have any decision in this?” Ash demanded.

  “Of course you do,” she told him. “You get to deliver it with me.”

  Chronozon leaned over the desk and touched the intercom. “Ms. Narla,” he said. “Bring up two of those transfer forms in the blue folder. I need to have them filed in triplicate.”

  The immediate failure of the new power packs across the system wasn’t noticed right away. At the time, there were enough of the older models in service to mitigate any problems that might take place when the newer versions failed. It was several days before most of the larger systems, which depended on them, began to shut down, but by then it was too late. Had the disaster been anticipated, the understructure of the system would’ve been saved by the engineers who’d installed the new versions. However, when the larger grid units began to collapse, there was nothing else that could be done.

  Three days after he’d begun work on a large power generation unit in the plains of Mars, a field technician tracked the initial problem to the new power pack he’d installed. It was supposed to keep the generator in operation. Should the generator shut down, the power pack would to provide electricity for the emergency beacons.

  However, when he opened the power pack, he found the crystal enhancement unit in ashes. This shouldn’t have been much of an issue, since the crystal was supposed to be in there to keep the vortex capacitor calibrated. As he traced the circuitry inside the power pack, the field technician was shocked to find it hooked into every part of the power pack that generated electricity.

  “Wait a minute,” he said to himself as he studied the manual. “This means the crystal supplied all the power to the power pack.” Further investigations showed the power generation station was retrofitted so that the power pack provided all the electricity it created. One slip stone crystal was sending out enough energy to provide for three Martian towns.