Ranger

by William Stacey

  He smiled again. "Hello, Lizzy, what a pretty name. I knew a girl named Lizzy once."

  "No, my name." She pouted.

  He turned away and leaned against the van, breathing deeply, his back to Leela and the little girl as his emotions surged.

  Cassie placed her palm against his cheek. "Hey, it's okay."

  "I… I didn't know. It's just…"

  Cassie sighed, hugging him again. "I know. I loved her, too, even if she could be a world-class pain in the ass. We owe her everything."

  "Don't say ass, Mommy. Bad word," Lizzy scolded her from inside the van.

  "Sorry, Peaches. Pain in the caboose." Cassie winked at him.

  "She'd be so proud," Alex said, his voice thick with emotion.

  "We should go," Cassie said. "Sometimes it takes a few minutes to get through the security cordon, and I can't miss this."

  Leela climbed into the front of the van next to Cassie. Alex jumped in the back next to Lizzy in her car seat. Cassie drove away.

  "Who are you?" Lizzy asked Alex with suspicion from where she sat beside him.

  "I'm…"

  "This is your uncle, Alex," Cassie said. "And this nice lady is your aunt Leela. They're both family."

  Warmth spread through Alex's core. Uncle Alex.

  Lizzy looked about her, her pale little face anxious.

  "Everything okay, Lizzy?" he asked.

  Her gaze fell upon a small stuffed purple octopus on the van's carpeted floor, her little arms reaching for it from her car seat. Alex reached for the toy, but it flew into Lizzy's hands. She hugged the toy against her chest, squinting suspiciously at Alex. "Mine."

  He smiled—a moment later, his breath caught in his throat, and he stared in wonder at the little girl.

  "Lizzy," said Cassie, looking at her daughter through the van's rearview mirror. "We never channel outside the house. You know the rules."

  "Yes, Mommy. Sorry."

  "That was impressive," said Leela. "She's so strong."

  Cassie turned a corner. "You have no idea. She can actually lift herself into the air."

  "You're kidding! I've never heard of a mag-sens flying."

  Cassie grimaced. "Not kidding and not so cute when you find your child sitting on the roof, playing with her toes."

  "I'll bet," said Leela.

  Alex stared at the backs of both women then Lizzy.

  Neither woman had noticed that Lizzy had channeled while Alex sat with Witch-Bane on his lap less than two feet away.

  16

  McKnight's new Gateway Machine sat within a massive warehouse surrounded by a high-security fence with razor wire and constant MP presence. Cassie joined a line of vehicles waiting for entrance through the gates. A pair of MPs with P90 submachine guns and bulletproof vests checked the IDs of those in the vehicles, while another walked a bomb-sniffing cocker spaniel around each vehicle. Alex barely noticed. Instead, he watched Lizzy play with her stuffed toy, trying to understand how the little girl was the only mage he had ever seen channel near Witch-Bane.

  Was it because she was a ghost?

  "Cassie," said Leela, watching the MPs examine the IDs from the passengers of the car ahead. "Alex and I don't have ID."

  "Shouldn't be an issue. I told Heather I was bringing you. She'll have added your names to the lists. Besides, Alex is famous, the man who destroyed the Culling Machine."

  "Elizabeth destroyed the Culling Machine," he said, wondering if he should bring up the fact that her daughter could channel near Witch-Bane but decided to let it go for now. Cassie had other things on her mind. Lizzie, so pale and fragile-looking, stared at the MPs. And she flies?

  Cassie was right. The guards were expecting Alex and Leela. One of the MPs had even insisted on shaking Alex's hand, telling him it was an honor. Alex just smiled politely. Cassie was also right about Witch-Bane. The moment the MPs saw the sword, they insisted he leave it in the guard shack. When Alex balked, one of the MPs promised he'd see it secured. Reluctantly, Alex handed over the weapon. Cassie parked, and they exited the vehicle with Cassie taking Lizzy's hand. They followed a steady stream of visitors from the parking lot to the warehouse's entrance.

  "Why so many people?" Alex asked.

  Cassie shrugged. "VIPs, council members, family of council members, press. Anyone who can get an invite. There hasn't been a mission to Faerum since we went rogue and rescued McKnight."

  "And McKnight lets this happen?"

  Cassie sighed. "Doesn't like it any more than you, I imagine, but he's a politician now."

  "It's weird, seeing spectators. I'm still accustomed to Task Force Devil's operational security. We never had visitors."

  "Still plenty of security," said Leela as they passed a pair of MPs armed with shotguns. A large black-and-tan German shepherd sat between the two MPs, watching everyone.

  "Doggy," said Lizzy, darting toward the animal.

  "Yes, but you don't go near strange dogs, Peaches," said Cassie, tugging on Lizzy's hand to pull her back. "Dangerous."

  "Yes, Mommy."

  When Alex heard a voice he recognized, he saw Andy from last night, detailing instructions to a group of MPs. The MP captain's complexion was pale, and his face was shining from sweat. Probably feels as rough as me, maybe worse.

  At the building's large entranceway, more MPs scrutinized IDs. A large sign proclaimed the complex to be the NAC Proving Grounds. Once the MPs confirmed Alex and Leela were on the list, they ushered them inside. They followed the crowd through long gleaming corridors, past offices and rooms filled with rows of equipment. Twice, they passed through hermetic barriers. An undercurrent of excitement swept through the visitors as they breathlessly speculated on the impending mission.

  Easy for them—they're not the ones traveling to a strange world with boggarts, trolls, magic-wielding dark elves, dragons, and God only knows what else. Faerum is wildly dangerous and unbelievably hostile. And McKnight wants to colonize it. Humanity's hubris is a thing of breathtaking awe.

  "You all right?" Leela asked.

  "Fine."

  She took his hand and squeezed it.

  They passed through a final security outpost before entering an enormous open chamber housing McKnight's new Gateway Machine. A jolt of déjà vu coursed through Alex as his eyes swept the long banks of equipment, power terminals, cabling, and the Jump Tube at the center. A half foot of fog-like cooling mist coated the floor, giving the place a haunted look. Across the chamber sat several bench-stands, already filling with visitors. An army of technicians buzzed about with clipboards, making final checks. The frigid air thrummed with the droning of multiple air-conditioning units. There was so much ambient electrical power in this chamber that the hairs on his forearm stood up.

  Alex stopped in place, staring at the heart of the Gateway Machine—the Jump Tube. The tube was the size of a plane fuselage. The black-metal-and-glass construct stood atop a platform with a set of metal steps leading up to the open end. The opposite end of the tube stood empty. For a moment, his memory flashed to his other missions.

  A lifetime ago.

  The Jump Tube operated much like an airborne parachute jump. When the gateway opened, the entire team would shuffle forward, up the stairs, and into the charged tube. They'd come out the other end on another world.

  A group of about a dozen people stood near the base of the stairs, including Lee, Kargin, and his contact team—five men, one woman, and a dwarf. They wore their futuristic-looking combat uniforms and helmets with load-bearing vests stuffed with spare ammunition and equipment. Each man was armed with a bullpup assault rifle, except for Kargin, who wore his fighting ax and hand cannon on his belt. The woman was Boko, the mag-sens codenamed Snow White. Unlike the rest of the team, she wore her powered exo-suit with its articulated arms attached to her back so that they swept forward over her head. A gateway rig—that's what Kargin called it.

  The team was going in light, Alex realized, prepared for stealth and speed, not combat. He thought that might be
a mistake, but his experiences on Faerum had been decidedly negative, so perhaps he wasn't the best person to ask. If it were up to him, he'd send tanks.

  A blond woman in a green-and-blue tracksuit with the insignia of the Black Knights on her chest was chatting with Boko. A moment later, Alex recognized her, although when he had seen her before, she had been wearing a helmet and exo-suit. Liv, Liv Nilsdottir, he remembered, the other mag-sens. The other woman is Bokomoso Khumalo. Snow White and Long Bow. Without her powered exo-suit, Liv was almost unrecognizable. She looked like a model, in her early twenties, beautiful, tall and thin with piercing gray eyes, prominent cheekbones, and long straight blond hair that hung to the small of her back. Boko was older than Liv, in her early thirties, with her hair tied back, her eyes tight with stress. She held her helmet beneath her arm. Liv placed her hand atop Boko's forearm, leaned in, and whispered into Boko's ear. Boko smiled, her dark eyes shining now, and patted Liv's hand.

  Nearby, standing behind waist-high barriers, was an entire platoon of Strike Force soldiers, including a woman equipped with one of the Gatling gun-mounted heavy weapons exo-suits, Kargin's war rigs. The soldiers stood ready for action. They're a QRF, Alex realized, a Quick Reaction Force in case anything went wrong.

  "Coming?" Leela asked him.

  Cassie and Lizzy surged ahead to see Lee, with Lizzy breaking away from her mother to throw her arms around her father's leg. Alex and Leela joined them, waiting while Cassie kissed her husband. For the first time, Alex noticed Ylra standing beside Kargin, a somber expression on her features. He smiled at Ylra, nodding in greeting. After the Culling, both Kargin and Ylra had lived in Doig River for a year, but while Alex had bonded easily with Kargin, Ylra had always been more stoic and reserved.

  "He'll be fine," Alex said.

  "I know," Ylra answered. "He's going home. I'm jealous."

  "Soon enough, me own heart." Kargin pulled her in against him, nuzzling her neck. "Our people will outlive the queen, mark my words."

  Lee gripped Alex's shoulder then shook his hand. "Looking better than the last time I saw you, Major."

  It took Alex a moment to realize Lee had spoken Empire Common, the trade language of the Fae Seelie Empire. He replied in Dwarvish. "I see Kargin's been playing with his toys again."

  Kargin possessed three magical crowns of his own invention that permitted the wearers to link their neural networks and communicate telepathically. Cassie, Elizabeth, and Leela had used the crowns to combine their magical powers, creating a mag-sens fire team that was nearly unbeatable. But the simpler use of the crowns was to teach another language in a handful of minutes, which was how Kargin and Ylra had learned English and how Alex and Leela had learned Empire Common and Dwarvish during their year together in Doig River.

  "The entire team speaks the local lingo now," said Lee.

  "Trust me, you don't want to talk to the locals. Everything on Faerum will either kill you or eat you—maybe both."

  "Not the dwarves."

  Alex snorted, smiling. "You've never gotten drunk with Kargin, have you? Let Kargin do the talking. You keep your head down and come back to your girls."

  "You know it, Major."

  "Alex." He clasped Lee's forearm and squeezed it.

  "Alex." Lee smiled.

  "Hey, Captain," one of Lee's soldiers called out. Lee nodded goodbye then bent to examine a small UAV the soldier had set up on the floor. Lee picked up the UAV and turned it over as he spoke to the soldier.

  "Hello, Alex," said Helena Simmons, holding an electronic notepad in her good arm as she joined him. She had lost her other arm to an attack by Ulfir Dunwalker, just before Alex had killed the dark elf. Her anger toward the enemy was at least a match for his.

  "Hello, Helena. Quite the setup you have here. How'd you rebuild everything?"

  "We didn't. Most of the equipment was still intact beneath the Magic Kingdom. Rebuilding the Jump Tube was a challenge, but Kargin was surprisingly helpful with that. The new one might even be an improvement."

  "Really? He's that good?"

  "Gifted. So is Ylra—although their cognitive problem-solving skills are vastly different from ours. They just seem to process data in a surprisingly innovative manner and come up with options we'd never consider. It's hard to fathom how they meld technology with magic—brilliant, really. Almost makes you want to cut their brains open and take a look—not that I ever would, of course."

  "Of course." Kargin was as much at home working a forge as he was rewiring a quantum supercomputer. Dwarves were just… different. Alex glanced at the UAV Lee was examining. "What's with the UAV?"

  "The plan is for the contact team to head as quickly as possible for Deep Terlingas. Kargin thinks it's a trip of fifty to sixty kilometers."

  "That's farther than you'd think—especially in the jungle. That could take days—hell, weeks, even."

  "It isn't all jungle. There's also a river, hill lands, and a rather formidable desert called the Char."

  "What's that?"

  "A big hot place." She smiled slyly.

  Alex rolled his eyes. "Helena."

  She sighed. "Doesn't matter. Boko's Shatkur crystal is fully charged. With her gateway rig, she can make a path to Deep Terlingas in three or four jumps with plenty of juice left."

  "Ah," said Alex, understanding now. "The UAV goes first."

  "Exactly. It moves ahead to maximum radio-controlled distance, twenty to thirty kilometers. Then it transmits coordinates to Boko, who opens a gateway."

  He nodded. "Better than walking all the way."

  "Indeed."

  Across the chamber, voices rose in argument. McKnight turned his back on a knot of angry-looking men and women in business suits with an air of self-importance and stormed away. They glared at McKnight's back as he approached Alex and Helena. McKnight's cane thumped on the floor as he walked, perhaps a tad too aggressively.

  He paused before them. "Alex," he said curtly before turning his attention to Helena. "Are we ready?"

  "On time, Chairman," she answered.

  McKnight motioned for her to lead the way, and the two of them headed for the mission control center set atop a raised platform filled with control consoles and monitors. Cassie and Lizzy were saying their final farewells to Lee, but Lizzy, old enough to understand her father was going away, was in tears.

  "It's all right, Peaches," Lee said. "Daddy's going to be fine."

  "You're going to make the air clean, right, Daddy?"

  "Yes, Peaches. We'll find you clean air so you and the other children aren't so sick."

  "We should find seats," Cassie said, her voice breaking.

  "He'll be back before you know it," Alex said.

  Cassie nodded, looking away as her own eyes welled with tears.

  Lee and his team stood in line before the steps leading up to the Jump Tube, each resting his hands on the shoulders of the man in front, with Snow White in her gateway rig at the back of the line. Lee was at the front, with Kargin behind him. A single red light flashed at the entrance to the tube. Alex shifted on his bench, glancing at Lizzy and Cassie on his right, Leela on his left.

  Technicians had handed out safety glasses with darkened lenses, but Alex had removed his, knowing that staring at the Jump Tube wasn't dangerous as long as you didn't do it for too long. Sometimes it gave you toothaches, though. The air shimmered and warped. Any moment now, he knew.

  The static electricity built as the endless rows of terminals came online, fed by what must have been most of the power generated by the Hoover Dam. The black-and-silver Jump Tube hummed with energy, the silver rings interspersed along its length glowing.

  Alex's gaze darted to the control platform across the chamber, thirty meters away, where Helena Simmons stood behind the technicians staring at their monitors. She reminded Alex of a conductor controlling her orchestra.

  Cassie held Lizzy tight against her, making sure Lizzy's too-large safety glasses didn't slip. "Don't squirm, baby," she said.

&n
bsp; The QRF platoon stood between the stands and the Jump Tube, ready to charge forward if necessary. Task Force Devil never used a QRF during insertions, but judging by how badly the last recon mission had ended, maybe they should have. Clearly, McKnight felt the same way.

  A voice blared over the intercom, echoing across the cavernous chamber. "INITIATE QUANTUM SEQUENCING IN FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, MARK."

  Bright searing light flared at the end of the Jump Tube as the connection between worlds went active. The flashing red light turned steady green.

  "Go, go, go!" Lee yelled, trotting up the steps, the others right behind him.

  Cassie's body stiffened, and she held Lizzy tight to her side. Lizzy gasped, her little hands flying to her face. "Daddy!"

  Lee entered the Jump Tube with Kargin and the others. Snow White thumped up the metal stairs and had to lean forward to fit within the tube.

  Moments later, the contact team was gone, already on another world.

  It was both terrifying and breathtaking. Although he'd accompanied all the other missions, Alex's pulse raced. "God speed, Lee," he whispered.

  "THE CONTACT TEAM IS ON TARGET. ALL READINGS NOMINAL, FIVE BY FIVE."

  The technicians on the control platform cheered. A moment later, the cheer was mirrored by the spectators. Even the soldiers in the QRF platoon cheered, slapping one another on the back. Alex turned to Leela, her face lit up with excitement.

  "What now?" she asked.

  "I suspect they'll leave the gateway open for another five to ten minutes, make sure the QRF isn't needed. They can't leave it active much longer than that. The power drain is immense. In fact, they…"

  His voice trailed off as he saw the excitement atop the control platform. Several of the technicians were standing and yelling excitedly. They blocked his vision of Helena but not before he recognized the look of fear etched on her features. He whispered into Leela's ear, making sure Cassie didn't hear him. "Something's wrong."

  Then, below the stands, a woman in a thick padded jacket jumped a barrier and charged at the QRF platoon. The soldiers, facing the other way, spooling to charge into the Jump Tube, didn't see her. An MP yelled something in challenge.