by Dana Fredsti
Beside him, his lieutenant’s ugly bulldog mouth gaped open.
“Pay no heed!” Stearne called out to his remaining men. “It is naught but a last trick of the warlock! His infernal powers of illusion cannot avail!” Pulling out his pistol, Stearne took aim at Merlin’s chest, but his spooked animal danced nervously from side to side, preventing him from taking a clean shot.
“You have no idea what we are, or what we can do.” Merlin took a step forward, his expression cold and distant. “But you’re about to find out.” Behind him, the waters suddenly began to churn. A low, thrumming vibration began, silent but palpable, causing Stearne’s already anxious horse to rear and whinny in fright.
Then, with a roar of rushing air and water, a massive shape rose up and hovered in the air, rivulets cascading off every angle of its sleek surface. It was a flying vessel, double-decked and a hundred feet long—big enough to be a jumbo jet, elegant enough to be a luxury yacht. It floated above the waters, perfectly still and serene. The name emblazoned on the side of the vessel was Vanuatu.
Blake sat up, shaking off the now stunned ring of soldiers who had been trying to gag and shackle him. He rose to his feet and caught sight of the ship, then froze in wonder. Nellie pulled free, snatching the keys from her captors and shoving the pair away from her for good measure. Harcourt sat up, rubbing his head where he’d been struck down by the flat of the Roundhead’s broadsword. He gawked at the ship along with the others.
From the vessel’s flanks, twin fields of brilliant prismatic energy fanned out on either side into wings, made up of beams of light arranged in a feather-like configuration. At the fore, another sheet of raw energy beams formed a spearheadshape extending out from the nose. The energy fields shone with a multi-colored brilliance like the gleam reflected off a diamond. Taken as a whole, it made the vessel look like an abstract statue of a bird in flight, created from glossy metal and planes of shimmering, iridescent crystal.
The Roundheads knew this was no mere trick of light and sound. They could feel the wind and the spray of the water on their skin. As they stared in awe, the gigantic craft turned its bow toward them, pivoting effortlessly in the air. A long cannon-like device emerged, projecting from an aperture in the ship’s nose. It trained itself directly on Stearne, while a booming electronic voice came from within.
“SURRENDER AND DISPERSE OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE.”
For the span of a few heartbeats the soldiers could only stare, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Stearne and his lieutenant were just as transfixed as the rest of them. Then at last, the lieutenant lost his nerve completely.
“Bugger this!” he swore, clambering onto his horse, whipping it around, and galloping off over the ride. A moment later, like a startled murder of crows taking to wing, the rest of the company scattered in panic, leaving the witchfinder to his fate.
Wearing a look of utter shock as he watched the last of his soldiers abandon him, the Puritan dropped his pistol and dismounted, standing stock still.
Merlin called out a quick order. “Get the lights on those horsemen and give me voice amp.” The ship flashed spotlights on the fleeing horsemen, bright enough to pierce the day.
“Halt!” his amplified voice demanded. “Halt or die!” The cavalry obeyed instantly, wheeling their horses around as Stearne dropped to his knees.
“Have mercy,” he begged. “I implore you to spare me, unworthy wretch that I am.”
“Quiet, you,” Merlin growled. He addressed the riders again. “Take this bastard back with you to your Lord Fairfax. And tell Fairfax to cease the fighting in Colchester. You all have bigger problems than… than… whatever the hell you’re fighting over. There are a lot more things in the world that want you dead.” He paused, then looked down at Stearne and added, “When you get there, you will confess your crimes. We’ll know. We’ll be watching. Tell Fairfax.”
Stearne peered up, his face a mask of confusion.
“Go on, get out of here, you despicable worm,” Nellie told the miserable Puritan. “Go back and tell them what you’ve done… or else… grrkkkk.” She drew her finger across her throat.
Nodding, Stearne grasped the reins of his skittish steed, mounted, and rode back to join the others in a swift retreat.
Blake stormed up to Merlin.
“Damn it!” he snarled. “Why the hell didn’t you just blast him? He’s just going to keep killing people.”
The scientist just looked at him thoughtfully.
“You may be right. But I couldn’t just blast him.”
“After all he did?” Blake shook his head in disgust. “Tell me why the hell not.”
“Primarily, because this is a research vessel, not a warship,” Merlin said. “That’s not a laser cannon—it’s a telescope.”
“Bloody hell…” Blake swore softly.
“Merlin!”
Turning at the sound of Amber’s voice, the scientist saw her kneeling next to Cam. The Celt lay unmoving on the ground, battered and bloodied. Merlin knelt beside her and examined him briefly, before turning to the others.
“He’s dying,” Merlin said.
43
A gangplank extended seamlessly from the ship to the shore. At the top, a large door opened and out floated what looked like a smooth, slightly oversized surfboard. Sailing through the air down the gangplank, it came to a graceful, feather-light landing on the ground right alongside Cam, then flattened out at the edge in order to slip itself entirely under his body.
Having scooped up the patient, the board twisted like taffy, extending a quartet of slender, flat restraining arms up out of the sides to secure Cam safely as the stretcher lifted him away again. Holographic indicator panels popped up in the air above his body, giving readings and flashing red over areas of trauma.
As far as Amber could tell, Cam’s entire body was trauma.
The stretcher’s aerial glide up the gangplank was smooth and rapid. Merlin hurried after it onto the ship, followed closely by Amber and the other survivors. The outer door opened onto a long central hall.
“This is the ship,” a calm, disembodied voice announced. “Cabin One has been converted to a med unit and is standing by.” The stretcher vanished through an open door.
“Thank you, ship,” Merlin answered. He moved quickly to the door, hotly pursued by Amber, pausing to allow a sheet of blue light to project down from ceiling to floor. Turning to the others, he pointed further down the hall. “Wait for me in the common room!” Then he went through the sheet of light.
Like hell, Amber thought, following Merlin into the blue light without a moment’s hesitation. It gave a gentle hum as she went through it to emerge into a completely featureless, windowless white rectangular cube. In the center hovered the stretcher, which unfolded into a full-blown medical gurney. Cam’s ghost appeared suddenly, floating above his body—a translucent blue-green hologram showing his internal organs. A series of small holographic panels sprang up all around the body to provide medical readouts.
Merlin pored over the diagnostic monitors. Amber flattened herself against one wall, as close to him as she dared. A multitude of tentacles extruded out of the walls and ceiling. They set to work swiftly undressing Cam, gently cleaning away the blood and grime, and prepping his body for surgery.
He looked even worse with all the blood and dirt gone—so bad that Amber could hardly bear to look at him. His face and body were covered in dark blossoms of deep red and blue-black contusions, so swollen that he was unrecognizable. She kept her eyes raised to the holographic display above, but that was frightening in a different way. False-color images showed the extent of his massive internal injuries. They were all over his body, internal bleeding spreading and branching throughout in vibrant hues.
Red flashing indicators continued to spring to life. She turned to Merlin, as he watched the med unit work, his face grim. He clearly understood exactly what the diagnostic indicators were telling them.
“Dr. Meta… Merlin? Will he…?” Amber couldn’t
finish.
Merlin met her eyes, but he didn’t speak. She could read the truth there, all the same. He turned away for a moment. Then, after a moment of deliberation, he turned back to the displays and interfaced with one of them.
“Don’t worry, Amber.” Merlin gave her a weary smile. “Cam’s going to be alright.” A second holographic ghost appeared in the room, hovering next to the scientist.
Amber needed a second glance to realize that this readout was for Merlin himself. His internal organs were adorned with a golden latticework, radiating from the middle of his chest. He looked free of any trauma, despite having taken a musket ball in that very place.
A large lump emerged from the wall, forming into a rectangular shape. The scientist leaned against it as it tilted up into a second floating gurney that came to rest alongside Cam’s. Merlin lay unmoving while a trio of tentacles spiraled down to his chest.
“Ready for transfusion,” the ship’s voice said. Merlin nodded and closed his eyes.
“Proceed.”
As Amber watched, the golden latticework in Merlin’s hologram began to dissolve.
* * *
A little less than an hour later, Merlin’s eyes fluttered open again. Amber leaned over him anxiously.
“Merlin, can you hear me? Are you okay?”
He looked up at her with a soft smile and a little nod.
“Is… Cam…?” he asked. Amber broke into a relieved smile, and nodded.
“See for yourself.”
Cam lay sleeping peacefully on the surgical table, a drape covering his lower body. The swelling had gone down, and he looked like himself again. There were lines and clusters of tiny silver hexagons where cuts and bruises had dominated before. Above him, his holographic display showed none of the alarmingly red areas—all the bright patches were gone, replaced by constellations of golden hexagons.
“You saved his life,” Amber said softly, “but I couldn’t tell if you were sacrificing yourself to do it.”
“I’ll be fine,” Merlin said. “It was a calculated risk. The medical nanites in my system had done all the hard work necessary to repair me, so I was happy to loan them to Cam. I’ll take them back in a few days, after they’ve finished on him. In the meantime, I’ve made up the difference in my own body with some good old-fashioned stem-cell tissue.” Amber shook her head, too tired to even begin to parse what he’d just said.
“I’ll just take your word for that.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”
“It’s the least I could do.”
“Everyone will want to know what’s happened,” Amber said. “Can they come in?”
Merlin held up a hand. “In a few minutes,” he said. “I want to talk to you first.” He slowly sat up and faced her. “I know what you all did for me while I was unconscious. Alex risked her life to save me from those pterodactyls—”
“I think those were pterosaurs.”
“You know what I mean,” Merlin said. “I need to thank Nellie, too, but I especially need to thank you and Cam. The others were going to leave me behind. You two saved my life. In doing so, you may have saved the world, as well.”
“You’re welcome.” She hugged her arms tightly. “I’m glad I could help, but honestly, you reached out to me first. How did you know who I was?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, all the messages you sent me in my dreams. That’s how I recognized you. You showed me your face.”
“I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You have to know,” she insisted. Amber found herself getting upset. “That shard of blasted earth— the one that looked like it had been nuked. Where the hatch was hidden? You put the key in my head. It had an underground bunker with that giant flying crystal thing?” He looked at her blankly. “With the lightning? It came to life and lifted me off the ground? And all those dreams with your face looking at me. Asking me for my help to save you.”
He continued to stare.
“None of this rings a bell?” she said, her voice rising. “Seriously?” She wanted to hit him in frustration. Merlin frowned, and put out a hand to calm her.
“Hold on now,” he said. “There’s never been that sort of nuclear conflict, so unless it came from Hiroshima or Nagasaki, there couldn’t be a shard like the one you described. More to the point, there’s no such thing as telepathy.”
Amber shot him a look. “Says the man who controls flying spaceballs with his mind.”
“That’s different,” he countered. “That’s pure technology. People can’t go into other people’s dreams.”
Amber frowned. “Then something seriously weird is going on.” Almost as soon as the words were out, she stopped herself, giving a small, self-deprecating laugh. “God, talk about understatement. But I know it was you—and you knew who I was, too. I really did open that hatch. I know it sounds crazy, but all those things really happened.”
Merlin rested his chin on his hand.
“I believe you,” he said. “I just don’t know what to tell you. There must be a rational explanation, however, even if we can’t arrive at it yet.”
Amber nodded, taking a deep breath and expelling it.
“So where exactly are we headed?” she asked, trying to put her frustration behind her.
“We’re heading back to the main site of the Omnia Astra Project,” Merlin replied.
“How far is that?”
“It’s at the South Pole.”
“Holy shit.”
“I know it’s a long way,” Merlin said, “but it’s our only chance to reverse the Event before it’s too late.”
“What do you mean?” Amber replied. “I thought you said you could fix it. That everything would be the way it used to be.”
“No, what I said is that another Event is going to occur, further shattering the timeline,” he replied. “And then another will strike, and another, and another, their frequency increasing as time becomes more unstable. The fracturing will never stop, not even when the shards that remain are microscopic.”
“So everything will just… disintegrate?” she said.
“Precisely,” he replied. “Down to the subatomic level.”
Amber stared at him in horror. “How can you be so sure about all of this?” she asked, unwilling to accept this worst-case scenario.
Merlin gave a deep shuddering sigh.
“Because,” he confessed, “as I said before, I know what caused it.”
“So what was that?”
He looked at her, the stars in his eyes glittering.
“I caused it.”
EPILOGUE
Amber lay exhausted on her bunk, staring out the ship’s window at the passing clouds. For the first time in days she was clean and had a real bed on which to sleep. Hot water and soft pillows had never felt so good. Best of all, Cam would be okay.
She desperately wanted sleep, but her mind kept replaying a never-ending loop of the day’s events, including Merlin’s doomsday revelations. Finally, her eyes shut of their own accord and all her anxiety simply drifted away into a deep, deep sleep…
* * *
She was dreaming almost instantly.
Merlin was there again.
Help me, Amber…
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, huge thanks to Steve Saffel, our Dark Editorial Overlord. Steve, your skill and understanding of what your authors are trying to create always results in a better book.
So much appreciation to Jill Marsal, amazing agent. Jill, your enthusiasm for this series has been a gift.
As always, thank you to the crew at Titan Books! Our eagled-eyed copy editor Steve Gove made some excellent catches, and we couldn’t be happier with the end result. Thanks to Hannah Scudamore—one of these Comic-Cons, we WILL have that drink! To Nick Landau and Vivian Cheung, Paul Gill, Julia Lloyd, Katharine Carroll, Lydia Gittins, Jenny Boyce, and anyone we may have missed.
Many thanks also to Ad
ele Wearing, Barbara Butler of the Colchester Young Archaeologists’ Club, and Jenni Gray for their help with research. And so much appreciation to fellow authors Patrick Freivald, Jonathan Maberry, Mark Wilson, Craig DiLouie, and Maria Alexander!
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dana Fredsti is an ex B-movie actress with a background in theatrical combat (a skill she utilized in Army of Darkness as a sword-fighting Deadite and fight captain). Through seven-plus years of volunteering at EFBC/FCC, Dana’s been kissed by tigers, and had her thumb sucked by an ocelot with nursing issues. She’s addicted to bad movies and any book or film, good or bad, which includes zombies. She’s the author of The Spawn of Lilith, the Ashley Parker series, touted as Buffy meets The Walking Dead, the zombie noir novella, A Man’s Gotta Eat What a Man’s Gotta Eat, and the cozy noir mystery Murder for Hire: The Peruvian Pigeon. With David Fitzgerald she is the co-author of Time Shards, a new trilogy of time-travel adventures, and she has stories in the V-Wars: Shockwaves and Joe Ledger: Unstoppable anthologies.
David Fitzgerald is a historical researcher, an international public speaker, and an award-winning author of both genre fiction and historical nonfiction, such as The Complete Heretic’s Guide to Western Religion series and Nailed. He is also a founding member of San Francisco Writers Coffeehouse. He lives with his wife, actress/writer Dana Fredsti, and their small menagerie of cats and dogs, and is often accused of being the Ferris Bueller of San Francisco. His latest fiction is the Time Shards series.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
THE SPAWN OF LILITH
DANA FREDSTI
Out of the spotlight, in the darker corners of the studio backlots, Hollywood hides a remarkable secret. Actor or actress, set designer, electrician, best boy, or grip— in la-la land, it pays not to be human. Vampires, succubae, trolls, elementals, goblins—studios hire anyone and anything that can take direction, be discreet, and not eat the extras. (The less you know about your agent, the better.) Though only human, stuntwoman and struggling actress Lee Striga is a member of the legendary Katz Stunt Crew. They’re the best in the biz, in part because they can fly, and boast superhuman strength. When Lee lands a job on the movie Pale Dreamer, however, not everyone is following the script. It’s up to her to figure out who or what is killing the cast and crew. Especially when Lee goes from stuntwoman to lead role... and the next target.