by Kyle Noe
“It is a universal symbol,” Hadrian whispered into Samantha’s ear. “A symbol found in your world and mine. Something we gave you.”
“Who are you?” Samantha asked. “Who are you really?”
“The last of my kind,” Hadrian replied. “A warrior priest sent out amongst the stars to recruit fighters for a holy war.”
Samantha tried to look back, but was held in place. She could barely move her head from side-to-side more than an inch or two. “A holy war against what?” she asked.
“Against a power that has the ability to humble even him who set the hands of time in motion.”
Samantha looked up and the red snake opened its mouth. She peered into its maw and saw a blast of fire and then the snake’s mouth peeled back as if to swallow her whole.
“What’s happening?!” she screamed.
“The past is being peeled back in loops,” Hadrian replied.
Samantha watched the snake’s mouth expand, bringing darkness and then the ground under her opened like a black hole. Everything unfolded, the fibers of time collapsing, the past unfurled. She was only twelve but Samantha experienced her first existential moment, she became truly aware for the first time of how insignificant she was in the grand scheme of things. Her eyes followed ill-defined forms toiling down in the gloominess, flickering, like an old movie projector beamed against a darkened wall. Distorted images flowed past her, ghost-like apparitions, sinuating, giving off a strange, eerie wind chime sound as they fluttered by.
“We have been going back into the loops, finding those that might help us win the war,” Hadrian said.
Samantha heard the echoes of combat next, the thwack! of stone and wood against bone. The ill-defined forms took on the visages of fighters from a time before memory. Archaic humans, pre-Homo Sapiens, doing great violence to each other in a broad field of tawny grass.
The images changed to scenes of a more recent origin, great armies fighting across the globe, tanks, planes, helicopters, precision guided munitions creating waves of fire that swept across everything, leaving a limitless expanse of gray dust. And then things rose up from the dust. People, cities. The sun and moon shot through the sky, strobe-like, flashing day and night and then there was an explosion in the sky.
Samantha watched the sun sheer off, peeling apart like an onion before winking out. The Earth went cold, frozen, the sun long gone, the world a vast, lifeless sheet of ice. She could see figures dressed in spacesuits forging across frozen oceans, being tracked by mechanized drones. When this was occurring she had no idea, but for a moment she thought she knew one of the figures.
And then these images flickered to scenes from her life as a child, eventually flapping forward, like a person thumbing through an old collection of photographs. She watched herself age with her mother and then events of the invasion could be seen. She was shocked to see herself cut down while running away from a mechanized drone in one image, witnessed her body vaporized in an airstrike in another, while in a third, she caught the bullet in the SUV that cost the life of the driver. She wanted to look away, but couldn’t, staring at her own death in various loops of time before a final set of images appeared.
There was one item that suddenly caught her attention. She feared letting Hadrian realize she’d noticed it, but there was no loop of string in any of the scenes. Her eyes wandered to her wrist and there it was, the single strand given to her by Eli. She paused at that moment, at the threshold of imagination, pondering what all of it meant. She surmised the lack of string meant that what she was watching was fluid, not fully formed events, not yet solidified. If the events were not set in stone, then that meant they could be changed. And if they could be changed, there were endless possibilities which filled her with dread and wonder all at once.
A final image appeared, something that took place in space. Samantha could see the Syndicate armada … and then came a flash of light, powerful enough to blind her for a moment. There were other things in the inky blackness of space, other craft, larger and more powerful than the Syndicate armada. More flashes of light and now the Syndicate ships were on fire, blasted apart, pinwheeling down toward the Earth.
The fighting raged in the air and on the ground and Samantha saw Hadrian in the middle of it. His arms were flung out to the sides and he was confronting a phalanx of bio-mechanical attackers. Hadrian lifted his arms and the ground opened and every inanimate object in sight, exploded, tearing the attackers to pieces. Syndicate soldiers surged behind Hadrian who led them on a mad dash forward into the attacking forces, everything swallowed up in a ball of flames. The Syndicate seemingly defeated, the attackers commenced an attack on the Earth in full, which obliterated the entirety of the globe in what seemed like mere moments. Everything the Syndicate had done, all of the bad acts witnessed by Samantha, paled in comparison to this new attack.
“What was that?” she asked.
“The end of everything,” Hadrian remarked. The images flashed out and Samantha remained, suspended in mid-air.
“You defeated us and then someone, that other power, defeated you?” she asked.
“Yes,” Hadrian replied, and Samantha couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Yeah, well, serves you right,” she said.
BOOM!
A fireball burst and Samantha covered her eyes and cried out. When she opened them, she was back in the grocery store, still suspended in the air.
“Why did you save me?” Samantha asked.
“Because you are unique,” Hadrian said. “You know what I speak is true, for you have always felt it.”
“Always felt like what? A freak?”
“You possess the ability to harness powers you dare not dream of, girl.”
“That’s a lie!” Samantha shouted.
“How was it that you were the only one who could use some of our technology? How was it that you downed one of our gliders with only a pistol?”
“Just a lucky shot,” Samantha replied.
“You will help us snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, “Hadrian said, ignoring her snark.
Samantha began to feel drained and frightened. She looked into Hadrian’s eyes, which were shimmering like the tips on a pair of knives.
“You’re the devil aren’t you? I mean, I was right before wasn’t I? We died, all of us, and you’ve come to do something with me.”
Hadrian pointed at a series of things lying strewn across the floor. Four moldy, sugar-coated donuts that had been liberated from a plastic serving container.
“Did you know that a substance in those—sugar—has an energy solidity that is four times that of the explosive called TNT? Each of those objects,” Hadrian said, gesturing at the donuts, “have the same kinetic density as a stick of dynamite. The problem is that sugar doesn’t release its power easily. Not unless you have the right trigger.”
Samantha looked up. “Is that what you are? Some kind of walking, talking trigger.”
Hadrian quirked what she thought was an eyebrow. “Raise your hands, Samantha.”
“No, no way am I going to do anything you want—”
“Do it now!” Hadrian commanded.
She wouldn’t and so Hadrian curled his wrist and Samantha felt a pulse of energy pricking the heels of her feet. The energy wormed its way up over the knobs of her spine and into the back of her head. Her arms suddenly burned and swung out involuntarily, and she thought she was going to vomit. Samantha tasted metal and then her nose began bleeding and the inanimate objects all around the store began rattling, as if somebody was shaking them.
“Finish it,” Hadrian said.
She swallowed a ball of metallic mucous and the room began to shake and undulate, and then every muscle in Samantha’s body contracted all at once and—
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The objects began exploding, blasting holes in the walls, the ceiling, gouging the floor. The detritus of the explosions rocketed past her head and then, utterly spent, she hung her head. She angled her chin u
p and Hadrian was standing before her.
“You are the one we were looking for,” Hadrian said.
“Screw you,” Samantha said, weakly.
“When the time is right, we will be reunited,” Hadrian said.
Samantha wanted to curse him out, but the force that was holding her up, vanished. She dropped a few feet to the ground and lay there, curled up in a fetal ball, her arms throbbing as if they’d been sunburned.
At the other end of the store, a figure crouched. The figure had not witnessed all of the interaction between Hadrian and Samantha, but she’d seen enough and recorded several seconds on an old cellphone. Xan, the blood drained from her face, sat on her heels, absolutely dumbstruck. What the fuck had just happened?! What in the holy hell had she just witnessed? It looked like some guy out of a comic book, some arch villain in a black robe had been holding Samantha up in the air as if she was a puppet on a string. And the explosions!
Xan was certain she wasn’t hallucinating when Samantha triggered the mini-blasts that nearly tore the grocery store apart. She massaged her face, wondering what to do. She could see Samantha lying there on the floor, panting like a whipped dog. Should she go to her or do something else entirely? After all, it was clear that Quinn’s daughter was what? In league with the aliens? A mole? A traitor to the cause? Something worse than that? Xan fingered the stock on her rifle and gave serious consideration to shooting Samantha down. She was just a kid, but she threatened everything that the resistance had fought to build.
Xan flipped her weapon’s safety off and raised it before a sound echoed.
The roar of a car.
She turned back and poked her head out of the rear of the grocery store. There were two SUVs idling up on the road. Several men and a few women had dismounted from the machines and Xan tensed, thinking they might be bandits. But then the man in the lead, hopped down an incline and Xan was shocked that she recognized him. It was Luke!
She swiveled and Samantha was right there in front of her!
Xan jumped a few inches into the air.
“Were you there the whole time?” Samantha whispered.
Xan was several inches taller and outweighed Samantha by fifty pounds, but she felt herself shrink in the girl’s presence. “No,” she said, weakly.
“What did you see?” Samantha asked, her gaze narrowing.
“N-nothing,” Xan stuttered.
Samantha paused, and then brushed right past her. Xan watched Samantha head out into the light, waving her hand. Luke shouted back and Xan stood there, watching Samantha being greeted and escorted back to the SUVs. She wondered what had really happened and whether, in taking Samantha back to Shiloh, they were condemning to death every man, woman, and child that lived there. She knew at that moment that she would likely have to act before it was too late.
16
Glory In Death
Quinn led the Marines and resistance fighters through the forest of upraised stone. They shuttled between the spires of stone and pulled themselves over naked slabs of rock. Here and there they witnessed what looked like more of the lava-like substance gurgling up from clefts in the shelves of stone followed by geyser-like bursts of steam.
Hayden was energized, maneuvering out in front of Quinn. She watched him dance between the pools of lava with preternatural fluidity. Quinn wasn’t about to let Hayden steal her thunder and so she willed her body into a higher gear. She launched off the balls of her feet and lunged forward, stepping up her pace until she was even with Hayden. Nothing tactical or strategic about it. Just needed the visual image of her being on par with her male counterpart. The higher the two climbed, hauling themselves up the rocky side of an embankment, working toward the reverse of a hillside, the more energy they seemed to gain. Built that way. And the target was near. On the other side of the hillside, Quinn could see the damned thing on her HUD.
The Marines had no trouble keeping up, trained, conditioned, and battle-hardened. Some of the resistance fighters, however, were fatigued after the battle on the lake. Quinn turned and looked back and saw Hawkins, Mackie, Mira, and the others dragging.
Quinn alighted onto a bunching of rock and spun around. She could see the Syndicate horde, led by the Reaper drones along with the airborne Swan drones, closing on the warriors. The machines had exited the lake and were funneling through a pass in the forest of rock, rolling forward. Some of the airborne drones lifted up into the air while the others clambered over the rocks like mechanical crabs. It was only a matter of moments before she and the others were spotted and targeted.
“SET YOUR EXPLOSIVES!” Quinn screamed.
She jumped down and worked with Hayden, pointing out the best locations to plant what little explosives were left. Quinn watched Renner unspool a length of metal wire and run it between a handful of sticky bombs that he secured at ankle height. Next she saw Mackie and Hawkins remove a Hafnium rocket and dig a shallow trench, the men clawing with their hands at the rocky soil. They placed the rocket nose down in the trench, directly underneath a ballistic grenade that they covered in a few inches of sediment. The alien drones were so heavy that even a nearby footstep would likely detonate the grenade, triggering the Hafnium rocket. Quinn just prayed they were far enough away when the rocket exploded.
When this was finished, Quinn ordered the fighters to toss aside everything but their armor, rifles, and a single Hafnium rocket launcher. The warriors did so and then moved in two ragged lines upward. They heaved themselves up over jagged ice rock and past strange constructs that were evidence of some long-lost alien civilization. They clambered over structures that looked like abandoned temples and around a great point of metal that protruded from a cropping of rock like the apex of a cathedral.
Quinn reached for a handhold when the ground shook.
BOOM!
A missile landed just below the warriors, showering everyone in debris. Quinn glanced over her shoulder and the ground beneath them was covered in drones. Her stomach knotted. There were so goddamn many of the alien machines, massing like fire ants, drawing close to the areas where they’d placed the booby traps. She watched the airborne drones begin swinging around and up. They had two minutes, maybe less, before the booby traps were triggered.
“THEY’RE COMING!” Quinn shrieked.
The warriors turned and fired down onto the approaching drones, strafing, removing spent magazines, re-magging, and then strafing again. The drones returned fire and in a flash it was like being in the middle of a cyclone. The air filled with a humming, as if a million pissed-off bees had been loosed from their hives. Quinn watched shards of rock and shrapnel scythe past, some of it whacking off her helmet. But when it hit her, she noticed Eli struggling to keep up and away from the blasts. She grabbed him by the shoulders, heaved him up and over a difficult ledge, and shoved him forward.
“GET TO THE TOP!” she shouted.
The warriors scrambled higher, passing the stretches of sharpened stone until they were crawling up over monoliths that were curved and without angles. There were no cracks, no ledges of any kind as the warriors shot holes into the rock and pulled each other up. Quinn looked back to see Mira helping Milo up atop the rock they’d just traversed, reaching a hand down. Quinn cursed, they were moving too slowly. If the drones triggered the booby traps now it was likely they’d be caught in the curtain of fire themselves.
She dropped straight down and grabbed Mira who pulled on Milo. Quinn turned and dug her free hand into the ground, willing the three upward. Rockets and missiles exploded to the left and right, saved from certain death only by providence and the design of her armor. She looked up and saw Hayden and the others at the top reaching down to offer assistance. A final look back showed the hillside and skies filled with drones.
Quinn screamed and lunged upward as Hayden grabbed her arms and—
The air seemed to crackle, as if they were standing under electrical wires. Quinn could feel a pulse down under her and then—
WHUMP-BOOM!
The brutal energy from the tripped booby traps powered up over the hillside with such propulsive force that it hurled Quinn, Milo, and Mira over the top of the ridge. They slammed into Hayden and the others, everybody collapsing in a heap. Looking sideways, Quinn was shocked to see little fires burning on the ground, flames licking pieces of the drones that had been jettisoned into the air after the blast.
She turned and moved on her stomach and looked back down the hillside. Quinn immediately thought that the ground where the drones had just been resembled one of the lower rings of hell. The ground was blackened and a whirlwind of fire smothered everything. Several of the larger Reaper drones were still recognizable, the machines twitching and flailing, the alien navigators cooked alive in the machines’ bubbletops. Serves them right, Quinn thought to herself. After all the death and destruction they’d brought, it was high time the Syndicate learned what it was like to suffer.
“Hot damn, that has gotta hurt,” Renner said, dropping down next to Quinn. “The bastards are getting broiled like shrimp. I bet we took down over fifty of the fuckers.”
“You know what they call that?” she asked.
Renner shook his head.
“A good start,” Quinn answered, smiling inside her helmet.
The blast had saved their asses and bought them some more time, but the Syndicate wouldn’t stop. More drones were visible out on the lake and this time when they came, the Marines and resistance fighters would not be able to greet them with any booby traps. She crabbed back and cued her communications link.
“Front row seats to the show, Cody,” she said.
There was a burst of static and then Cody’s voice was audible.
“What a glorious sight to behold. Bad guys are down by sixty-five drones by my count,” Cody replied. “Only four-hundred and fifty-seven or so to go.”
“Always the optimist.”