After the rumbling dissipated, I kept my pistol aimed at the tents below. Tristan had expended his power completely and was now lying down near Braxton. Braxton also kept his electrified hands aimed outward waiting to see if there was any movement in the camp. Two of the tents were already fully ablaze and another was smoking from the embers along the bottom.
“Is he okay?” I shouted.
“He’ll be alright,” Braxton replied, kneeling next to Tristan, “It’s something we call Mystic exhaustion.”
I continued to examine the borders of the camp, afraid to let my guard down. After a few breaths of silence, I rose from my hiding place and started my trek down to the camp below.
“USSC Mystics!” I heard Braxton shout suddenly, “We’re Legacy!”
I was currently out of view of the camp, so I had no idea why Braxton was shouting. I quickly made my way down the wooded path that would lead me back to Braxton and Tristan. I heard other voices as I approached quickly with my weapon ready.
“We have another person on the cliff, so don’t be quick to shoot,” Braxton’s voice came.
When I rounded the edge of the cliff, I saw Tristan and Braxton sitting on the ground with several armed men nearby. I had one of the armed men in my sights as I approached, but it was easy to see that they weren’t subduing us. I lowered my weapon and rushed over to Braxton.
“Why are we still alive?” I asked, wrapping Braxton in a hug, “And how did Tristan do that crazy stuff?”
I could feel the shudders of Braxton’s laughter, but I refused to release him. I’d probably confused him by my emotional display.
“He’s got more than just the ingenuity of that awesome Mystic suit like the one you gave me,” Braxton said, lifting Tristan’s arm to show me the device attached to his wrist, “As an acrobatic guy, he requested the engineers of the Foothold to design him some retractable cables that he could launch at will.”
I examined the thick wrist strap with a metal spike protruding from it and resting on the back of his hand. It was indeed a beautiful piece of machinery that would still require a lot of skill on the Mystic’s part.
“I love to swing and fly,” Tristan muttered, gradually losing the sleepy look in his dark eyes.
“I’ve got to admit, it looked like a lot of fun,” I offered with a laugh.
“Remind me to teach you someday,” he chuckled, “I’ve got three extra sets in case one of these gets damaged.”
“I’ll have to take you up on that one,” I said.
. . .
We were escorted back to a giant cave that had to be only a mere two hundred paces from the Constellation’s camp. The enemy had been dangerously close to discovering and perhaps destroying the last hope of Legacy. While we may have been heralded as heroes, there was no time for celebration according to the scouts. There was another whole battalion headed up from the lowlands and these ones were dragging an ion cannon behind them.
Tristan introduced us around to the many people of Legacy who had joined forced with the Foothold to defend their planet against Earth. I learned fairly quickly that these people were simply referred to as Legacy, whether they came from the Foothold, from Green, or from Blaze. Braxton and I were now officially a part of “Legacy” along with Tristan, but now instead of that word referring to the name of our planet, it referred to the side we fought on.
“We’re heading back to Earth to stop something that we’re sure is headed our way. If we don’t stop it, Legacy will perish,” the shuttle commander said, shaking my hand after we’d been introduced, “I’m not sure what’s going to happen here as a result of our actions, but either way, it’s been nice meeting you.”
“What do you mean ‘as a result’?” I asked.
The commander nodded to someone who was carrying a bag up the stairs and into the shuttle. He returned his attention to Braxton and me.
“We’re going to mess with some causality here on this attack,” the commander replied, “We’ll be changing the order of things and hopefully keeping the Earth away from Legacy.”
Now I remembered what it was like for Braxton and how I’d felt whenever the people of Foothold used to explain things to me. None of it used to make sense and now I was back in that same spot again. I nodded at his statement just like I used to in the old days. Then I grabbed Braxton’s hand in mine and stepped away from the shuttle.
A quake suddenly interrupted the quiet mood inside the cave. Rocks tumbled down outside the cave, some being quite large in size. I saw two people rush in from outside, screaming something about Earthlings. I turned to Braxton hoping he caught something that I didn’t.
“I heard him say ‘more ships’,” he muttered, “Hopefully not another Constellation.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” the shuttle commander shouted, “Now!”
He turned and darted up the stairwell and into the shuttle. Another person rushed up the stairs behind him.
“Half the crew is still down in the flatlands,” the man shouted into the shuttle, “Are we picking them up?”
Another quake shook the cave, scaring me to death that the cave itself would eventually collapse. I heard the commander tell him that they didn’t have time and they needed to clear out. The man looked out the door of the shuttle, then raised his eyebrows at us in question.
“Let’s go,” Braxton said, taking a hold of my hand and starting up the stairs.
I didn’t have time to think and I don’t know what I would have decided even if I did. All I know is that the man in the doorway stepped aside and ushered us quickly in. I heard Tristan shouting Braxton’s name in the distance. I peeked out to see him running to the shuttle with a black bag.
“It’s my spares. The wrist cables you wanted to learn about,” he shouted in explanation, tossing the bag at me.
I caught the bag, but returned a confused gaze at him.
“You two can figure them out, now get out of here,” he shouted.
The stairs retracted quickly, followed by the door closing almost on the bag itself. I tugged it in and followed Braxton’s lead into the passenger section.
“We’re only a crew of twelve now plus the commander,” the man who’d invited along stated, “Take a seat and we’ll discuss the future after we get off this forsaken planet.”
The shuttle rocked all of a sudden, then we felt the strong gravitational forces pushing us back into our seats as we presumably escaped the cave and headed into space. I reached out and took the hand of Braxton into my own. He turned to me and kissed me lightly on the lips.
Final Entry – 1017
We escaped the atmosphere of Legacy and are now waiting to get past Luna before we risk bringing the Jump Drive online. Had we waited another day, we probably wouldn’t have made it. I could make out the shapes of the Foothold and the forward portion of the Constellation in the distance as we escaped. The stories of the last two survivors of the Foothold seemed to agree with what I was seeing. I will have them write down everything from the beginning so we have a detailed log.
Our scanners picked up two other giant ships approaching our planet as we rounded the other side of Luna. I couldn’t risk spending another moment imagining what was going to happen to our families down there, so I tapped in my pass code, set a course for Sol, then hit the acknowledge key twice. The Jump Drive came online…
Violation
One
The moment Shay’s fingers wrapped around the three days growth on his chin, he realized he was doing it again. Back when he used to be the Chief Engineer on the USSC Foothold, his chin-rubbing had become the telltale sign of a stressful day. Even the captain himself would make comments along the lines of “Chief Engineer’s rubbing his chin again, so look out.”
Many years have passed since his engineering days on the Foothold and his hair has found its way from black to gray, but the commander was still rubbing that same chin for the same reasons. Now, as the supreme commander of the Disruption Mission, Commander William Shay
found himself faced with infinitely more stress than he ever faced in his Foothold days. He could have never imagined that one day his shoulders would be bearing the weight of all the hopes of a beautiful planet in the Hydrus constellation.
He felt a lump growing in his throat as he stared at the three scan results on the Apollo’s pilot panel. One scan told him that they indeed had arrived in their solar system – no surprise there. The other scan told him that their shuttle had arrived just inside the Mars’ orbit of the sun at about 119 million miles from the sun. The red planet itself however was nowhere within the vicinity of their local scan. The third scan was the one that was the most disheartening, hence those fingers rubbing against the stubble of his chin.
If their new Jump Drive had caused the shuttle to rip through 24 light years of space in an instant, barring all the laws of relativity, they would have theoretically arrived back at Earth around the year 2377. Although Legacy had its own unique dating system, he never lost track of what the date should be back on Earth. Shay was fully aware of the fact that the laws of physics insisted that arriving in 2377 was never a possibility.
If the shuttle’s Jump Drive followed the same scientific laws as drive that doomed the USSC Pioneer, they would now be stuck somewhere in the 16th century. Shay was promised however that the alterations made to this new Jump Drive should prevent such significant time-dilations as the original experimental Jump Drive.
Yet here were the results of the radio traffic scan. The solar system was absolutely silent. While he’d been hoping for nothing more than a hundred-year dilation factor, he was now faced with a minimum of four hundred years.
“Did we make it as planned?” Weapons Chief O’Rourke asked, interrupting the commander’s thoughts.
“Not as planned, but we didn’t come unprepared for such a possibility,” Shay muttered, tapping the small screen in front of him, “No radio traffic whatsoever.”
The chief approached the commander, then leaned in to examine pilot panel. He swallowed, staring at the scan results, believing for a moment that perhaps they would change if he willed them to.
“So, what are your thoughts, Commander?” the chief asked, hiding the worry in his voice.
The commander sighed, shaking his head.
“Well, this scan doesn’t necessarily mean we arrived at a pre-technological point in history. We won’t really know anything until we get to Earth. For now, I’m just hoping we don’t find ourselves orbiting a 16th century world in a few hours.”
The commander rose from his seat and headed over to the navigation terminal. The navigator, Shay’s own niece Jennifer Byers, was one of the eight people they left behind on Legacy when the Apollo was forced to make a hasty escape. This would have been her workstation during the entire mission, but now it remained yet another vacancy to be filled by a very limited crew. Commander Shay sat down at the terminal and tapped a few keys, then performed a planetary scan. It responded only a few seconds later with the report.
“Well, we’re in luck. Earth is at its aphelion about 62 million miles to our left. We can get our answers in under an hour,” he stated.
The commander entered in a course for Earth. Since the Apollo wasn’t equipped with the Ytterbium-Flank engines of interstellar craft, they were limited to speeds slightly less than a tenth light speed.
Shay finally had a moment to relax a bit after nearly two hours of chin-rubbing stress. He pressed his fingers into the sore muscles at the sides of his jaw, realizing that he must have been clenching his teeth the whole time. That was when he noticed the chief pacing near the communications terminal.
“What’s on your mind, Chief?” Shay asked.
The chief knocked his fist on the back of the communications chair, then grasped it in both hands. He stared off at the main viewing panel which was now showing some evidence of their movement. After a moment, he turned his attention to the commander.
“As Weapons Chief, there’s something I think I need to tell you,” he replied, pausing a moment to gather the words, “We left in quite a rush, as you well know. The last of the intended crew to board the shuttle earlier today was Legacy-Sergeant Ryan Eight. A good man, by the way. Anyway, he… well, he…”
Commander Shay rose from the navigation chair, confused by the chief’s sudden lack of words. He’d been working closely with this crew for more than a full Legacy season and he’d never seen the Weapon’s Chief at a loss for words.
“Just spill it, Chief,” Shay said, “We’ve got some free time on our hands to deal with whatever problem there is.”
“Sergeant Ryan brought those two Foothold survivors aboard. He invited them to join us,” Chief O’Rourke stated, “I’m talking about the two that helped Tristan the Mystic to destroy the Constellation camp.”
The commander almost shrugged him off, wondering why that would concern him much. Two more people could be beneficial since they found themselves losing half their intended crew. Then he remembered the gloved hands and the black irises of the Foothold’s surviving male.
“Wait a minute,” the commander replied, feeling his pulse suddenly rise, “Ryan brought a Mystic aboard?”
“Yes sir. A living, breathing weapon,” the chief replied, “That’s why I figured I needed-”
“What was unclear about ‘no Mystics’?” the commander growled, “We were leaving Legacy to come to Earth – a world unaccustomed to the… the whatever-it-is that the Mystics do. Besides, it’s a danger to all of us.”
Chief O’Rourke nodded, looking to the floor. The commander was now pacing in front of the main view panel.
“For what it’s worth, these are two of people who obliterated the camp of nearly a hundred of our enemies. And these are the two who destroyed the ASA Constellation in orbit above the Earth,” the chief offered.
“I know,” he replied with a sigh, “I saw the two of them right before I boarded and actually I even planned on getting their deposition once this was all over with. But I didn’t plan on taking them along with us. And what do you think this Mystic would say about our… our ‘special cargo’?”
The chief shook his head, not quite sure of how to reply. The commander stopped his pacing and turned to the chief.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” the commander stated, “I think that we should take it all one step at a time, beginning with briefing the crew.”
Underworld
It didn’t take me long to find Elix this time. It was a lot easier since I’d been following him quietly during the last portion of his little escape. As I watched my son from the Upper Mount Doorway, I felt certain of one thing: curiosity would kill my Elix one day, and when that happens, I would lose the last living portion of my heart.
“Elix,” I called, stepping out into the crisp night air, “It’s not safe out here.”
“They’re coming closer, Mom,” Elix replied, never even turning at the sound of her voice, “They used to always avoid the Mountains. Now they’re digging.”
“I know.”
What more could I say? I couldn’t lie to him and tell him everything would be all right. I truly had no idea what would happen when they found us. I know what happened the last time they discovered us many generations past. Savages.
My innocent Elix was glowing a beautiful violet tonight, which was the main thing that scared me about his brave ventures into the Upperlands. He was almost as bright as the Night Orb above. If the uplanders looked toward the peaks, they’d surely see some form of moving light.
“Come, my son,” I said, reaching a hand to him, “We must get below before Giant Star rises.”
He turned to me, causing my heart to melt again. I hungered to have that same kind of beautiful innocence radiating again behind my own black eyes. He still had a hold of something precious that I wish our whole world could capture and embrace.
“Why are we stuck in the Tunnel-world all the time? I love the feel of this breeze on my face. Can’t we have it
all the time?” he asked, approaching and taking my hand.
I turned back toward our doorway hidden in the shadows of the rock, inhaling that refreshing breeze.
“The Giant Star hurts our flesh, so we can’t be out here when the star comes. But we’re the lucky ones, you know,” I said, patting him on the shoulder, “Do you remember when you saw those two uplanders from the cliff top? Did you see their skin?”
“Yeah, but don’t you remember the Scripts? Script 107 says ‘Overlord gave them light within their flesh so darkness would never overtake them in their homes’,” he said, slipping into the doorway with me and down the angled tunnel, “The Scripts say that Overlord gave us our light, but it never says for us to stay below – never.”
“You think too much, Elix, but I’m glad to hear that you’re studying your Scripts,” I replied, following his lead down Mindian Tunnel, “The Scripts tells us that our skin was created to glow and our eyes were created for low light. The uplanders have dull brownish skin and eyes of many colors, but if we took them below, they would be blind.”
Elix started running up ahead, enjoying the speed of the tunnel’s sharp downward slope. He was a blur of violet light that melted my heart. It melted everyday that I opened the Scripts and read the one fact that I would never be able to change. That would be Script 1086: “And his name would be Elix – the one who would be taken from his mother, snatched from the world. He would be returned but only at a time that the Overlooker could fully comprehend. And Elix would save the world.”
Two
“I’m sure you’re all aware of the blinding fact that we have a much smaller crew than we intended. I also take it that you’ve also had time to meet our two stowaways Diana and Braxton,” Commander Shay said with a kind grin that looked a little forced, “But I haven’t had the pleasure. I’m Commander Shay, the appointed commander of this shuttle and this mission.”
The Mystic Saga Omnibus (Books 1 - 5) Page 19