by Adam Holt
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are all works of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, and events are entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 Adam Holt
Cover art copyright © 2015 Allen Quigley
ISBN: 1940873029
ISBN-13 9781940873022
All rights reserved. Published by Createspace in the United States of America. Edited by Kristen Ball (twitter@k_ball).
Visit adamholtwrites.com for more information on this novel, the author, and his other works.
Visit allenquigley.com for cover art inquiries.
For my parents, friends, and family, who love me,
my editor Kristen and beta readers, who put up with me,
the readers, who read me,
and the universe that exceeds us all.
Thanks to Kickstarter,
where more than one hundred fine folks
pledged support for this work,
especially the Stones, my parents, James Turk,
and the Mike Dunns.
Your generosity inspires me.
THE RATHMORE CHAOS: A TULLY HARPER NOVEL
Part One: Ευρώπη
Part Two: Preparation
Part Three: “When you descend upon the Chaos”
Part Four: Icarus
Part Five: The Seventh Step
Little Bacon’s Glossary of Terms
Character List
Afterword
About the Author
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all –
-Emily Dickinson
“HOUSTON, WE HAVE PROBLEMS”:
JANUARY 1, 2071
The black canyon stretched in front of me, one hundred yards from one frozen side to the other, a jaw ready to swallow me whole. The old Tully—the one who lived on Earth and tried to avoid homework—would never have dreamed of jumping this divide. The new Tully—the one who sneaks into space—could handle bigger problems, like leaping canyons. Also, the new me only weighed 15 pounds on this alien world. Nothing beats low gravity. As long as I hit my first step, I would leap the canyon with no problem, which I did, and waited on the other side for the rest of our team. The stars above me winked their approval.
If it had not been for the Ascendant, we would never have made it this far. Their lies made the Earth so dangerous that I had to leave. I should probably thank the Ascendant for that. I had never been closer to finding my long lost friend than I was at that moment, watching the others leap the canyon on the way to our destination.
The Rathmore Chaos.
My oxygen levels read 90%—nice—so I took a deep breath and watched several moons and planets bobbing across the horizon. I rubbed the backs of my scarred hands, which were supposedly my greatest weapon, but lately hadn’t been reliable. I caught my reflection in my helmet visor—who is this new me, this boy in a battle with a hostile alien race?
One jumper then another landed nearby, and as our final team member sailed across the canyon, a tremor knocked us to the ground. In the middle of the canyon a geyser erupted, spewing liquid water hundreds of feet into the air. The water transformed into chunks of ice in the frigid air. Oh, no. Up went the geyser and with it went my friend, her arms flailing wildly – a bird beating its wings against an airless, alien sky. The rest of us jumped to our feet and bounded after her, and I hoped like mad for one thing—that my powers would return before she landed in this place of ice as sharp as knives.
The phrase, Houston, we have a problem, comes to mind. In fact, Houston, we have about a thousand problems, but we’re millions of miles from you now. I can’t explain this geyser disaster–or anything that came after it–unless I back up a few weeks. You know, when the world still thought I was a teen runaway, not a wanted space criminal.
Let me pick up this story in a news studio, right after my first trip into space, and fill you in from there. We’ll work our way back to this canyon eventually, and then we’ll travel well beyond it to where I am now, in the Rathmore Chaos.
Happy New Year,
Tully Harper
PART ONE: Ευρώπη
ASSASSIN SIGMA.
YOU HAVE RECEIVED YOUR ASSIGNMENT.
THIS IS OUR BEST CHANCE TO TAKE THE BOY.
ELIMINATE THE OTHERS IF YOU CAN.
PLEASE REPORT WHEN THE MISSION IS COMPLETE.
WE ARE ASCENDANT. WE ALWAYS RISE.
-GT
#FINDTABITHATIRELLI
The bright lights of the news studio and one wild trip into space had clearly fried my brain. Otherwise, I would have noticed the figure who came alongside me on my way back from the news studio bathroom. One second I was alone in the bright hallway, trying to clear my mind. The next moment a man shoved me into a dark storage room full of dust and old cameras. He put something to my throat that glowed purple and felt cold. Then he locked the door and put one finger over his lips.
“Shhhhh,” he said. “Do you want to live?”
This was the last in a long line of questions that I had faced that morning. There were a number of people on stage at the news conference, but the press focused on me. Hundreds of reporters fought for my attention. Tully, in your own words, what happened? My friends and I stole – er, borrowed – a hovercar. We ended up in the Florida Everglades. That’s where Tabitha was abducted. Why do you think the kidnappers are now after you? Because Sunjay and I have seen them. Also, we injured one of them. He wants revenge. Do you have any idea where they took her? She could be anywhere. It’s the one thing I want to find out. If Tabitha were listening right now, what would you say to her? That she should have faith. We will find her, no matter where she is.
There was so much of the truth in the lies that it hurt to answer. Tabitha was abducted, we were in danger, but she wasn’t within a million miles of the Everglades.
Back to the cramped room and my assailant. His dark eyes gleamed beneath his baseball cap. Do you want to live?
“Of course,” I said, “I have to find my friend, but I can’t do that in here.”
He tightened his grip. The edge of the knife felt like dry ice against my skin.
“Then why haven’t you left?” he said.
“Uh, because you just locked us in this storage room,” I said.
“Save your jokes for another day, Tully,” he said. “You have to disappear. They are coming.”
The way he said the word “they” didn’t make me think of the kidnappers that we told everyone about. The fake ones that Sunjay and I escaped. No, “they” made me think of something much larger and darker, a predator with the power to enslave the whole human race. It made me think of the Ascendant. But what did he know about it? He was probably just a crazy fan of my dad and the Harper Device who thought the world was coming to an end. Either way, he could be right.
“Thanks for your concern, Guy with a Knife, but I’m under police protection.”
He threw his head back and laughed. He took the knife off my throat, and that’s when I got a better look at the blade. It had a familiar purple glow. There was an old television camera next to us, and with one flick of his wrist, he cut the entire thing into two pieces that clattered to the floor.
“Do you take me for a fool? I know the truth. You just returned from space. The Ascendant captured your friend on the far side of the moon. Rumor has it that you managed to steal the Sacred and cut off Gallant Trackman’s hand. He wasn’t very pleased with the outcome of his conspiracy game. No, Tully, th
ey are coming for you. You delayed them, but you and the Sacred are in danger.”
He closed the blade. The light from under the door dimly lit our faces. I was speechless. His words silenced me more than any knife or black staff could have. The Sacred. No one else knew the real name of the Harper Device.
“Who are you?” I asked him.
“I am no longer a friend of the Lord Ascendant,” he said. “That makes us friends.”
“Friends don’t let friends play with alien knives,” I said. “If we’re friends, then tell me where Tabitha is. Where is the Ascendant home world?”
“Stop your search,” he said. “Do not seek this place. It holds great peril. The Earth is dangerous enough. The Ascendant have many eyes here but little power. Still, all it will take is for Gallant Trackman to find the right assassin.”
“Which is what you are?”
“What I once was,” he said sadly, “and what I will no longer be. There are some orders I cannot follow, no matter what Trackman would pay me. Your death is one of them. Now I believe our time is up. You must go. May the Universe rise up to meet you, my young friend. We will not meet again in this life.”
He walked to the corner of the room and flipped open his alien switchblade. Then he traced a perfect circle on the floor, and when that portion of the floor fell away, he disappeared into the hole.
He left me alone in the dark, no closer to finding Tabitha but determined as ever. She went into space because of me. She didn’t return because of me. I would bring her home or die trying, and so would my dad and my friends.
I heard a knock at the door.
“It’s locked,” someone said. “Tully, are you in there?” I quickly covered the hole with a bucket and some dirty towels and opened the door. I found myself back in the bright lights of the hallway. A mob of people, including my dad, Sunjay, and Queen Envy, crowded around me. Cameras clicked and questions commenced. I ignored all but one.
“You okay?” asked Queen Envy. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Maybe I did,” I said.
My dad grabbed Queen Envy and me by the arm and escorted us outside. The double doors opened and revealed a mob of fans and paparazzi waiting for the three of us – the pop star, the world’s most famous astronaut, and his runaway son.
My dad and I hopped into a hovercar. Queen Envy and her entourage headed for a hoverplane nearby. Before she boarded the plane, she yelled back for me and held up her bracelet. “#FindTabithaTirelli,” read the bracelet. Millions of her fans wore them. The hashtag was trending worldwide. It was the truth and the lie. She and I both knew the truth. Tabitha was farther away than anyone could guess.
“Don’t give up hope,” she told me. “Hope is the thing with wings, Baby Bear. You don’t forget that.”
It was the last time I saw Queen Envy for a long, long time.
AWAY TEAM BETA -
OUR ASSASSIN FAILED US.
PLEASE DEAL WITH HIM.
NO SIGN OF THE BOY.
RETURN TO SHADOW MODE
AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTION.
WE ARE ASCENDANT.
WE ALWAYS RISE.
-GT
THE CABIN BEYOND THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
After that alien knife to the neck encounter, my dad decided to shuttle Sunjay and I to a remote location. We had visions of islands in the Pacific or a rain forest in Peru. Instead he sent us back to the place that I wanted to escape from more than any other in the universe.
“The Middle of Nowhere,” he explained. “Well, close to it. Your aunt has a cabin about ten miles from there.”
“Beyond the Middle of Nowhere?” Sunjay said. “I was hoping for something with more, you know, seafood and coconuts.”
“And I am hoping to keep you both hidden and alive,” my dad said. “You can still holoclass into school from the cabin, and you can still search for Tabitha.” He handed me some rolled up papers – maps of the solar system, the planets and their moons.
My dad ran his hand along his crew cut, which told me this was an order, not a discussion. The commander had spoken, so a few days later Sunjay and I found ourselves being ferried across the United States by hovercar, hyperrail, and plane until at long last my Aunt Selma picked us up in her ancient, gas-powered Jeep. We off-roaded our way through mud and snow to the cabin beyond the Middle of Nowhere.
So Sunjay and I followed orders and waited for it. Second Contact. The day that the Ascendant would come to Earth. In the meantime we holoclassed into Space City Junior High and did very little work on some pointless group projects. We kept a fire going and scoured our minds and the star maps in search of breadcrumbs that would lead to the doorstep of the Ascendant. There might be no way to get there, but at least we would know.
What did we know? Their home world probably had more water than land. The Ascendant were covered head to toe in tattoos, mainly of ocean scenes. Their ship was named after a species of jellyfish, too, as Little Bacon had once pointed out. Their world must also be active, maybe volcanic. The Sacred had used the word “chaos” to describe it. And, last but not least, we hoped that it was in our solar system. If it wasn’t, the options were endless. So all that narrowed it down to–“
“—Four gas giants, two dozen moons, maybe some type of hollowed-out asteroid, or some giant alien something that no one has ever seen,” explained Sunjay, pointing at the map with a fire poker. “About forty options in all.”
“I’m tossing out the asteroids,” I said, picturing my vision of Tabitha in a tall purple tower.
I tossed another log in the fire and flexed my hands. The lightning scars hurt in the cold, but I had to stretch them. Use them and they will heal, the Space Alliance doctor told me. He meant to do normal stuff and maybe cut some firewood, but I had something bigger on my mind.
“If I used my powers for a split second, I might have another vision,” I told Sunjay. “I know what to look for now. I could find them.” Sunjay poked the log and flipped his shaggy bangs out of his eyes.
“You put the Device to sleep for a reason,” he said. “If you turn it on, won’t you put the entire world in danger? It’s not worth it. You made a promise to your daddy not to use your powers, so don’t.”
“I made a promise to save Tabitha,” I said, but he was right. The last time the Sacred had been on Earth, it caused earthquakes and created a hurricane that flooded a city. What was next? A tsunami, a volcano, something worse? I didn’t want the starring role in a natural disaster movie. I just wanted to find my friend.
“So what about Io?” he asked. “It’s a moon with active volcanoes that circles Jupiter. Sounds kinda like a villain’s lair. Lots of lava and rumbling volcanoes.”
“What good are weapons if you don’t use them, Sunjay?” I asked him. “My powers could help us.”
“Oh, yeah, nuclear bombs are helpful, too. They’re really good at blowing up cities.”
My best friend compared me to a nuclear bomb. Awesome.
“If I could only go back and do it over,” I said. “It’s my fault. I closed the portal. I’m the reason that they captured her.”
“You saved us all, Tully,” he said. “We would all be dead or captured if it wasn’t for you. You know that. Even now your daddy is telling the right people about this. They are preparing us for battle. Look, let’s do the best we can with what we have. The commander said that.”
Besides eating and Queen Envy, there’s nothing Sunjay loved more than quoting my dad, and he’s pretty quotable. My dad, who was in Switzerland at Space Alliance Headquarters thousands of miles away. He had told a select group of people about the Ascendant. They jumped into action and were gathering world support to defend against the alien attack. If that was even possible. Either way, it wasn’t easy to explain – “Hey, Mr. Russian President, aliens exist. Oh, and they’re coming to attack us” – but dad was getting it done. He had to.
Sunjay turned back toward the fire. He kept the fire going, and he kept me in check. These were
his duties. If I were alone in the woods, I would have already frozen to death…or used my powers and doomed us all.
At that moment the door to the cabin flew open. Sunjay spun around, armed with the fire poker, prepared to battle aliens. Instead we saw Aunt Selma in her overalls with two axes slung over her shoulder.
“You boys are a little jumpy today,” she said. “Looks like you’re just messing around on a Saturday morning. You ready for some work?”
AWAY TEAM BETA –
STILL NO SIGN OF THE BOY.
THE DAY GROWS CLOSE.
WATCH AND WAIT.
YOU WILL NEED THIS.
-GT
PROFILE: TULLY HARPER
Height: 5’1” Weight: ~100LBS. Brown hair, brown eyes.
CAPTURE ALIVE
Subject weak compared to you—but he is most dangerous.
Limited skill in combat, but he has come into contact with the Sacred. You know what this means.
Treat him as you would one of the Encountered. We do not know his potential.
Do not give him time to think. His powers are unpredictable.
Do not underestimate him. I did.
Await further updates.
WE ARE ASCENDANT. WE ALWAYS RISE.
THE WHAT?
“Stars, did these logs have babies last night?” Sunjay said, grunting with every swing of his axe.
“What?” I asked.
“I mean, there are lots more little baby logs than I remember from last Saturday. The baby ones are harder to cut. Anyway, do we really need to cut them all?”
“It’s either cut firewood or freeze to death,” I said, tossing another chunk of wood onto the pile.
“What if we had a laser saw? We could program it to do the whole stack in half an hour. Then we could go inside and do what we should be doing on Saturday morning—playing Cave-In!”
Video games. That sounded dire good. I flexed my hands. Even with gloves, the lightning scars were sensitive to the cold. And stiff. Scars never seem to let you forget.