Jericho Johnson: The Gauntlet of Time

by J. A. Stowell

  And maybe because I already had two women right behind me. I'm not sure. The progression of men and women selling their wares lasted a while but we finally reached the end and turned on the next street.

  Piper seemed to be having a good time, strangely, as she looked left and right, shaking her head at the vendors to their furs and strange meats. I guess I must've been watching her because she glanced at me quickly and caught me.

  I was about to drop my gaze like the idiot I was when she surprised me with a wink and a smile.

  Piper was, in a word, persistent. I know I hadn't exactly given her the answer she'd been wanting to hear back in Svalbard but that didn't seem to be deterring her in the quest for my affections.

  And, man, but was she doing a good job.

  Sad part was she wasn't trying that hard, now that I think about it.

  “These will look lovely in your beautiful hair, lass,” an older flower-woman said to Piper, holding out a small white flower to her.

  “She doesn't speak English, marm,” I told her. “But I agree. How much for the flower?”

  “Nothing for her, sir,” The old woman cackled. Her black hooded garb didn't look the cleanest but she seemed like a nice enough elderly person.

  Piper took the flower and nodded to the old woman as we passed by. Chloe wasn't exactly living in the moment so most of the vendors that tried to get her attention didn't even merit a glance.

  Too bad. A white flower would've looked good it her jet black hair, I would wager.

  If that sounded bad to you because I seems like I was leading Piper on so I could keep my 'options' open, as it were, then you can stop right there. I would never do such a thing...

  ...to a girl who can decapitate polar bears with one swing.

  And even if I were, which I most certainly was not, then why don't we weigh in my 'options', as I so eloquently put it.

  Chloe: The beautiful psycho-chic who had tried to kill me more than once, drug me through active war zones lurking with giant robots with machine guns and halfway across a frozen island, glares at me all the time, and, last but not least- called me Sir Chicago.

  And then there’s Piper: The also beautiful Viking chic who has been nothing but supportive of my time-traveling habit and who also winks at me a lot and is constantly reminding me of how awesome of a girlfriend she’d be.

  So which one do you think is a keeper, whoever-you-are?

  That’s what I thought.

  At least that’s what I had been thinking when I turned around and noticed Klaus and his goons standing in our path.

  Chapter 29

  “You’ve got to be kidding me, I said to my silk-covered comrades.

  Ha. That was really fun to say.

  Lots of bad things began happening at once. The first of which was when I realized, after I’d thrown up my hands to fry the bad guys, that if I used my gauntlet bolts I’d cook myself in my stupid armor.

  Isn’t that just the way? You steal an awesome suit of armor fair and square and end up with a handicap because of it.

  Ode to the foolish charmer,

  Who stupidly stole a suit of armor,

  He thought it looked good,

  And really thought he should,

  So now he…

  And that’s as far as I’ve gotten on that little jewel of a piece.

  Where was I?

  Oh yes, all the bad things that started happening when the bad guys arrived. The first being I realized I couldn’t attack them with my lightning gloves.

  Turning quickly, I grabbed a female hand in each of mine and bolted down the street away from the Russians, who had regained enough composure from their jump to see me making a mad dash down the street dragging Chloe and Piper behind me.

  I dragged them around a lot, huh? You’d think they’d save me for once…

  “Get down,” Chloe screamed, dropping to the ground and snagging Piper and I by the ankles, resulting in us face-planting in front of her. Before I could tell her to chill out I heard the unholy hiss of a rocket sizzle just above us and the barn about twenty feet in front of us exploded.

  Since we were all three laying down covering our heads like frightened children, we didn’t get thrown across the town like the last time we’d encountered an exploding building. Getting to my feet, I cursed the horrifyingly loathsome armor I was wearing to helheim. Or I would have had not the air been driven from my lungs by my belly-flopping on the hard ground in the accursed armor.

  “Do they even want the gauntlets intact?” I shouted above the roar of pandemonium that had ensued after Captain Horror had his men start sailing bottle-rockets from hell everywhere.

  “Good question,” Piper said from behind when we bolted into an alley. “We need horses.”

  “We can’t outrun Dragonovs,” Chloe told us fiercely. “The only chance we have is to obtain one of the suits ourselves.”

  The house we’d been leaning against while breathing like water buffalos shook and groaned. I started taking the armor off and Piper began helping me. “Let me out of this useless hunk of metal and I’ll light them up like Russian Christmas trees.”

  Chloe had already started shaking her head, “You can’t. It takes them hours to reboot after a massive electrical jolt and we don’t have time to wait for them. They’ve probably got their shields on now, anyway, after Scotland.”

  “Seriously?” I asked incredulously, pulling the armor over my head and tossing it before starting on my legs, grateful that I’d left my mix matched clothes on underneath, “Do they work like all good science-fiction and only can withstand so much?”

  Chloe frowned, getting on her knees in front of me and starting on the leg opposite the one I was working on. Before she could answer I said, “Chloe, this isn’t the best time for you to propose, dearest.”

  Ripping off the leg armor, she glared at me before saying, “No they don’t work that way. It’s a self sustaining type of shield that is the first of its kind.”

  “Let me guess--your dad?”

  Chloe nodded and stood, “Afraid so.”

  “No sweet spot or anything?” I asked, dropping the last of the horrid armor to the ground.

  “Only that they’re made to repel energy.”

  “Come again?”

  “Things like bolts from the gauntlets or lasers.”

  Frowning, I said, “What about bullets?”

  Chloe looked at me like I was asking one of the most foolish questions imaginable. “The Dragonovs don’t have to repel bullets, Jericho.” She said.

  “They can’t stop a sword?” Piper asked.

  Chloe sighed and was probably about to let her know that if bullets bounced off without leaving a scratch then swords sure weren’t going to do any good in our endeavor, but I cut in.

  “If Piper and I drew their attention could you do anything from behind?”

  We had long since started running again and it wasn’t making our planning any easier as we darted behind buildings and tents.

  “Maybe,” Chloe said, looking uneasy. “I’ve never had to work on one before but my father said that if you take away all the bells and whistles the Dragonov is just a more fire-power oriented version of the older STAf-7s. If that’s the case then-“

  Our hiding place shuddered and began collapsing from behind us. “Whatever, just do it,” I shouted, shoving her on her way and bolting away with Piper close behind.

  Splinters of wood and shards of rock hit us in the back as the old house groaned and fell right where we’d just been plotting. We skirted around the houses still standing and squatted behind a well. Peeking around the corner I saw that Klaus was still shouting at his devil soldiers and pointing at the rubble of the house they’d just brought down.

  “What are you planning to do, Jericho?” Piper asked me just when we heard Klaus scream. “Just what is your plan, Johnson?”

  “Oh my gosh, but will you people leave me alone and let me think?” I whispered furiously to Piper, “Stay here and don�
�t come out till I say.”

  Before she could protest, I stood and walked out from behind the well with my hands up, “Let’s chat, Klaus,” I called, walking slowly toward him and his gang of hellions.

  Turning around, Klaus saw me and smirked. “You really have not grasped that your life means nothing to me, have you?” He said with his hands behind his back.

  All three Dragonovs were covering me with their arms up and aimed, “Since your trigger-happy lunatics have killed both my comrades in less than thirty seconds I don’t see why anyone else has to die,” I said the lie rough and hard and Klaus took it.

  Smiling, the evil man asked, “Both of them?”

  “Yes.” I growled.

  “Even Atrium’s girl?”

  “Don’t tell me you can count to two,” I said, looking at him with the least amount of interest possible.

  “That’s a shame,” Klaus said and he truly looked like he meant it as he frowned at the ground. “Chloe had a brilliant future ahead of her as the first of her kind. My only hope is that we can salvage her remains for another prototype.” Then to the two guards on his right he said, “Find her body.”

  Ever the picture of obedience, the two Dragonovs tromped off in search of Chloe’s body because they needed it for…

  What was he talking about, again?

  I’m thinking I wasn’t covering my facial features as good as I thought because Klaus noticed my darkened brow and said, “I take it she never explained to you that she’s synthetic.”

  “Synthetic?” I asked, completely thrown off my groove, “Like a robot or android?”

  Shrugging, Klaus said, “However you wish to put it although since she has functioning human parts riddled here and there throughout her metacore, she cannot be classified as an android or anything of the like.”

  Too fast. This was going way, way too fast.

  Chloe came into my line of sight just then as she began sneaking up behind her target and I couldn’t help but notice how fluid her movements were.

  Without thinking, my hand went to my right shoulder that still ached at times from when I had tackled her in Rome. I recall stating that she had to be wearing body armor. Not wanting to believe that I’d been tricked by some Skynet rip-off, I grasped at anything I could think of. “But she bleeds. I saw that myself.”

  “From the neck up, yes,” Klaus told me. “Minimum amount of blood and veins are required to keep the brain working properly and it also keeps all the mechanical fluids from the neck down at bay. Or somewhat, at least.”

  “Then how is she the first of her kind? Don’t you future people have robots running out your ears?” I asked, watching in my peripheral vision as Chloe closed the gap between her and the unsuspecting pilot of the Dragonov.

  Klaus sighed, “Must I really explain this to you?”

  “If you want your glove back, spill it.”

  Sighing, he said, “The real Chloe was killed in a raid when she was fifteen. Her body wasn’t salvageable but her father discovered her brain and a few other parts were. So after a year of testing he created the being you’ve been running through time with for the past few weeks.”

  Fifteen. Told you I hated that number.

  Chloe was almost there. “So her brain is all that’s real?”

  “Well, that and her spine, which was the real breakthrough in synthetics since hooking machine wires to a spine isn’t easy and is also illegal,” Klaus said.

  It was true. All the insane feats I’d seen Chloe do came rushing back to me in one big picture.

  “Now, I think this concludes synthetic 101,” Klaus said, extending his hand. “The glove?”

  Checking the glove, I saw we had three hours left. No hope of a last minute train ride to safety this time. “One last question,” I said.

  Klaus wasn’t looking too happy now. “What?” he said.

  “Was Chloe programmed to glare a lot?”

  Klaus’ frown turned into a confused frown. “Glare?”

  Chloe was standing right behind the Dragonov and seemed to be fiddling with the back plate without the soldier noticing.

  Smiling, I asked, “Are you sure she’s an android?” The Dragonov shook hard once with a jolt and collapsed to the ground as the eye pieces stopped glowing, “Because I think she’s a freakin’ ninja.”

  Klaus spun around just in time to receive one of Chloe’s classic perfect ten hurricane kicks to his chest. I couldn’t help noticing that he flew almost fifteen feet before landing on the sandy street.

  “Nice job, Robocop,” I said, closing the gap between us and bending over to help her drag the pilot out of the Dragonov, which wasn’t easy because he came out kicking and screaming, or he would’ve had not Chloe grabbed his neck when the chestpiece opened up and, from what I could see from three feet away, crushed his windpipe.

  “The other two are looking for what’s left of your synthetic corpse. Won’t take them long to realize your still running on full battery, Siri.” I told her, looking her up and down like I’d just met her.

  Piper skidded to a stop beside us. “They’re not far away. Whatever you’re going to do, do it.”

  Chloe dragged the dead man out of the suit and motioned to me, “Get in.” she commanded.

  Not expecting this, I said, “Why me? You’re the Terminatrix ninja chic- you get in.” It wasn’t that I was trying to take jabs at her for not telling me, or anything. I just truly and sincerely wanted her to pilot the Dragonov and save the day.

  “I can’t,” Chloe said quickly. “This dress won’t protect my skin inside it if it gets hot.”

  Frowning, I said, “But if you’re this robot chic-“

  “I’m not synthetic, you idiot,” she shouted, “I’ll explain later but for now you’ve got to pilot this thing and fast.”

  Without another word, I turned around and laid down in the suit, working my gauntleted hands into the arm slots. The armor closed around my legs, chest and finally my face and I took a deep breath.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing, here, Chloe.” I said, my voice resounding through the helmet, sounding deeper and a tad amplified. It was dark inside the helmet until the eyes of the face mask turned on and the sky appeared. Laying there for a second I saw a tiny loading sign spinning in the bottom right of my vision and a green bar came up beside a cloud, processed it, then the molecular structure of the cloud spilled out of the bottom of the green bar, explaining the various combinations required to create it.

  I sat up. It felt like my real body when I placed a hand on the ground and got to one knee. The feeling isn’t explainable, but I’ll give it my best shot.

  I felt like the mix of a Transformer, Spartan and a ninja. Or, as I like to call it--

  Optimus Spinja.

  That sums it up pretty good, I think.

  Glancing at Chloe, more green bars appeared while the suit broke her down and informed me of her height, weight and even put how much of a threat she was on a scale of one to ten.

  She was around a two.

  “You can tell it what to do in your mind if you are having doubts about commands,” she said.

  I had already figured this out when I had the suit make Chloe’s skin disappear so I could get a look as her insides, which were all flesh and organs without any robotics to speak of.

  On Chloe’s end, I just looked like a tall suited man staring at her through an expressionless helmet. But she knew what I was doing. Holding up her hands she said, “Satisfied?”

  “Little bit,” I said. “Did you say this thing can fly?”

  Chloe nodded and started backing away, pulling Piper with her. “How does it work?” The Viking girl asked.

  “Don’t ask.” Chloe told her, “Yes, it can fly.” She tapped the side if her head, “Tell it in there and be careful.”

  Then she turned and both girls bolted away leaving me standing in the sandy street. Turning around, I started for Klaus, who was trying desperately to get to his feet. My steps made satisfying tromping s
ounds when I stopped next to him, reached down and lifted him into the air by his coat collar.

  I pulled his face close to my helmet and said, “Stay down, pal. Things are about to get ugly.”

  I guess I should have just dropped him and gave him the two-fingered I-see-you point but instead I reared him back and sent him skipping down the street like a rock on a pond.

  “Stand down!” I heard my fellow Dragonovs yell from behind me. I turned my head to the side to look at them from over my shoulder.

  “I said stand down,” One of them shouted again.

  I faced them, “Anyone that don’t figure on dying best slip out the back,” I said in my most menacing Clint Eastwood voice before engaging the flight sequence in my mind.

  I’m not sure what I was expecting. I mean, there were a lot of variables when it came to a manned suit flying such as jetpack, rocket boots, wings, jetpack with wings and such. I guess I was hoping for rocket boots to be honest. But when the red hologram wings sprouted from my back and the lower back of the suit blasted me into the air with twin ports shooting blue flames, I must say that the boots seemed a tad drab.

  I whooped loud while I climbed into the air at an almost sickening rate, if the feeling of all my organs slamming into my feet was anything to go by. After I’d ascended so high that the town looked like a speck of the shoreline, I leveled out and began to circle back to see if my enemies had followed me into the sky. I saw them coming fast and prepared myself for my first aerial combat.

  The red holo-wings I'd thought were just for show were in fact the only way I could steer after I leveled out. Glancing at them in wonder, I saw that although I could see through them like any hologram, they were cutting the wind like butter. Then I remembered what Chloe had said about the self sustaining shield that could be engaged on the Dragonov and concluded that the wings could be something of the same material that had a limit to how far away it could go from my body.

  Or course, since they looked like red fuzzy wings and not like a shield bubble, I decided that I’d leave any questions about them for Chloe if I survived and just use them to help me survive.