Syndicate Wars_Empire Rising

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  As Cody began to tear up, the Potentate emerged out of the shadows. He’d been watching from behind, out of sight the whole time.

  Cody couldn’t muster the strength to fight. He couldn’t even get up off the table. “Wha-what did you do?” he asked. “What the hell did you do?”

  “Nothing,” the Potentate said. “You did this.” He spoke in a strangely calm and comforting tone.

  “What?” Cody said. “ I was fighting back. I stopped you.”

  “Yes, you did, and the results were rather spectacular.” The Potentate turned and gestured to the images in the air, the shots of the barren Earth. “That said, I imagine you have questions,” he said, over his shoulder.

  “You did that.”

  The Potentate shook his head. “You doubt your own eyes? I have shown you that there are others out there and they are coming. What if I’m not a destroyer? What if I’m … a messenger?”

  “Every villain thinks he’s the good guy,” Cody said. “ You’re trying to say … what? That you’re some kind of savior? That you’ve shown me some bullshit and expect me to believe it? To forget everything you’ve done? You don’t get to enslave humanity and force them to kill each other and then get to call yourself the good guy, you asshole.”

  “The good guy?” the Potentate said. “I’ve never claimed to be that. My reasons are selfish. Saving humanity is simply the price I must pay to have what I desire.”

  Silence passed between them.

  “Who were they?” Cody asked. “That other armada. The ones that destroyed the Earth?”

  “I don’t know what they’re called,” the Potentate said. “I’ve looped back so many times, tried a hundred different ways to stop it. But it’s been a different enemy most times. These I hadn’t seen before. All I know is that Earth became known to the rest of the Universe three years ago… well, three years in this timeline, in every timeline. But it’s been decades since the first time it happened. And every time, they come. From different parts of the galaxy. From different planets. Different species. Each of them intent on destroying humanity before you reach out into the stars. It leaves me wondering what it is about humankind that makes them so intent on destroying Earth before it’s even ready to fight back. Do you ever wonder about that?”

  “The only thing I wonder about is—”The Potentate interrupted him. “Yes, I know. The woman and child. Quinn and Samantha. You should know that you’re still in a loop now. Even as we speak, your body is now on a different version of this temporal ship with the others, your Marine friends. You’ll be pulled out soon. Any second.”

  A long beat.

  “You should be wondering, though,” the Potentate said. “About how it’s even possible to stop this without the Syndicate.”

  “How’d you even build this time ship? How did you manage to loop back?” Cody asked.

  “You’ll find that out very soon. But right now, I simply want to know one thing.”

  Cody gazed at the Potentate.

  “What will you do?” the Potentate asked. “Now that you know how everything is destined to end, what will you do? Will you keep at your current folly? Or find a way to change things?”

  “Not like you’ve given me a choice.”

  “I have. You just don’t see it yet.”

  “Then you already know what I’m going to do, and it’s not really a choice. It’s predestination.”

  “Ah, but that’s not how I see it,” the Potentate said. “Or these loops would have ended a long time ago.”

  “I still despise you,” Cody said.

  “We have that in common,” the Potentate said.

  “Killing humans to save humans isn’t the answer, you sick sonofabitch.”

  The Potentate ignored Cody’s words. He reached out a finger and tapped Cody on the forehead. “Think about what you’ve seen here,” the Potentate said. “Solve the riddle I haven’t been able to.”

  Cody suddenly felt dizzy. A warm current surged over the entirety of his body and the tiny hairs on his arms stood at attention. It was happening again. He was going back. Going back to the other loop, but this time, things would have to be different. If what the Potentate had showed him was true, changes would have to be made. But how would he do it?

  His head spun as he fought to keep his bearings as the time ship simply melted away all around him. He was no longer strapped to the table, but falling down into a black vortex. He’d spent the last two plus years doing everything that should have worked. And he’d succeeded, and yet, it didn’t matter. Now he knew there was something bigger at play. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it yet. There was still something missing, something he wasn’t yet able to process.

  He looked down and there was a swirling cone of light beneath him. He was falling into it, sucked down, and he wondered what was happening next, if they would be okay, or if this was his end.

  A wall rose up before him, rippling like water, and then it was around him as he plunged into it, face first and then came up splashing about.

  He wasn’t falling anymore, but was back, he realized with a look around the place to see that he was back on the time ship.

  He was alive and back with Quinn and the others in the moments after the ship’s time traveling mechanism had started up.

  His body bucked and he rolled over and vomited and then he peered up and saw it. Saw her. Quinn. She was staring down at him, worry in her eyes.

  14

  Back Home… Maybe

  A wall of gelatin.

  That’s the first thing that Quinn thought as she vaulted into the murkiness on the other side of the portal. She’d run full steam into a gelatinous barrier. Quinn threw her arms out, punching through the colloidal obstacle, and what came next was infinitely worse. She punched through the partition and felt nothing behind it. Indeed, the next step she took was like walking off the edge off a skyscraper.

  Quinn’s stomach heaved and then she was falling straight down with Renner alongside her, the two screaming, fighting for purchase only to be buffeted by a powerful current that began lifting them up into the nothingness. Quinn called out for Renner, who was above her, flailing her arms impotently. She felt an unnatural fluidity in her limbs and began kicking her legs as if she could swim up after him.

  There was a glowing light overhead which allowed Quinn to see that she and Renner were snared in a swirling vortex, what appeared to be the cone of a tornado that had been turned upside down. They were being pulled toward the end of the cone, drawn through a funnel whose walls were collapsing on each other. She wanted to grab Renner and move away from the funnel, but her body was unable to execute on the things her mind conjured up.

  She waited on death, certain that at any moment she’d fall back down into the darkness or slam into an unseen object, her body disintegrating, nothing left of her to remember or mourn, nothing left to continue to fight against the aliens or find a way to bring Samantha back. Then the light above grew in intensity, a respite from the gloom. Soon Quinn was encased in a coil of orange luminescence, warm, blissful even, her body snugged inside it like a cocoon.

  A hand appeared and reached down, fingers opening like the petals on a flower.

  Quinn paused, then reached up for it as the fingers wrapped around her wrist and pulled her forward.

  BOOM!

  The darkness vanished in an explosion.

  Quinn’s ears rang.

  Her eyes went wide as she was suddenly drenched in blinding whiteness and water. She gasped, her mouth full of frigid water as somebody pulled her up and out of—

  The pool of azure water she’d seen back on the time ship!

  The water was bubbling and foaming all around her. Quinn cried out and blinked away the water to see Milo. He was down in the pool with her, the water up to his chest. He was screaming something that she couldn’t make out while clutching her wrist. He was the one who’d pulled her up and out of the bottomless abyss she’d been in only moments before.

  She up
chucked a mouthful of water and collapsed into his arms. He was whispering into her ear, but she couldn’t respond, unable to move any part of her body. Worse than that, she could feel every neuron in her body firing at once as her tongue lolled and spittle flooded the corners of her mouth. For a moment, she thought she might be in the grip of a powerful seizure.

  “LET’S GO!” Milo shouted. He grabbed her arm and pulled her up and onto the promenade she’d seen before, the one made of silver alloy that was at the center of the room where the time travel mechanism was located.

  Her eyes swung in every direction. There was Renner on his back, soaking wet, shivering uncontrollably, being comforted by Giovanni and Eli; Cody similarly on the ground, body bucking, eyes wild and white; the time travel machine under the promenade going into overdrive, its parts a blur as they manically slammed into each other.

  Quinn collapsed to the ground and her ears popped as if she’d descended from a mountaintop. That’s when she heard it. The screeching sound of metal on metal, the echo of explosions and screams of what sounded like animals and men, and things slamming into a faraway door.

  She looked sideways to see Milo, whose mouth hung open as if he had a thousand questions to ask her.

  “You’re never going to believe what happened to us,” she whispered.

  “Can’t wait to hear it, Quinn, but at the moment we’re under attack.”

  He helped her to her feet. She was unsteady, but leaned on him. She stared at the faraway door which rocked on its hinges. “The aliens are trying to break in, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, but that’s not the worst of it,” he answered, the color draining from his face.

  BOOM!

  A massive explosion rocked the time ship, shunting the vessel, nearly knocking Quinn back down to the ground. Milo grabbed her arm and led her across the promenade until she could see that there was another craft on the outside firing on the time travel ship.

  “Like I said. We’re under attack,” Milo muttered.

  “But we’re on a Syndicate ship,” Quinn replied.

  Milo slowly nodded and Quinn’s thoughts returned to the alien craft she’d seen back on the frozen ocean. The one that had apparently been part of the force that vanquished the Syndicate. The vessel firing on the time travel ship appeared to be a much larger version of that alien craft. She watched as a light built on the enemy ship, an enormous blob of greenish-blue energy that was suddenly launched at the time ship.

  “GET DOWN!” Milo screamed.

  The ball of energy slammed into the side of the time ship, knocking everybody sideways. Quinn rolled over, feeling the sonic shock wave from the explosion roll over the promenade and the time travel mechanism. She saw the levers on the device furiously pumping, the motion of the pistons and levers rhythmic, hypnotic. The air suddenly became incredibly warm, as if it was about to be set on fire. Milo crawled toward her and his face began to dematerialize only to materialize once again when—

  The faraway door burst open.

  A small army of Syndicate soldiers appeared in their red armor, weapons at the ready. Quinn screamed at the others, but she knew they were outnumbered and outgunned. They didn’t stand a chance. The Syndicate soldiers charged forward and then the air in the room filled with clouds of fine, shimmering particles. For an instant, Quinn thought she could see through the floor, walls, and ceilings. The ship undulated like a wounded animal in its death throes and Quinn looked outside. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The darkness of space had been replaced by the colors of an atmosphere: blues and greens and whites.

  They had broken through, no longer in space, but heading straight for Earth, within orbit.

  The Syndicate soldiers didn’t slow their pace. They fanned out, bringing their weapons up. Hayden and some of the others groped for their guns, but it was no use. They were out of quarters and the game was over. Quinn’s head sagged. So this is how it ends, she thought. Gunned down aboard an alien time ship.

  An alien soldier pointed a rifle at her and she threw up one hand in a defensive gesture when—

  CRACKBOOM!

  The rear of the time ship was suddenly and horrifically shorn away, sucking most of the Syndicate soldiers up into the air. Quinn screamed, covering her face as a fusillade of knifelike shards of broken metals, alloys, and glass bombarded her. Fingers laced together over her eyes, she peeked out to see the sky sailing past. The time ship was crippled, the rear half of the vessel ripped away. Her equilibrium was fucked as the craft dropped through the sky. She removed her hands and grabbed onto a section of railing at the edge of the promenade, holding on for dear life, riding the ruined space ship down through the sky like a rollercoaster from hell, a keening whine building all around.

  BOOM!

  The time ship slammed into something solid.

  Quinn was jarred, losing her grip, spinning across the promenade toward the open end of the time ship when—

  WHACK!

  Hayden grabbed her wrist and steadied her, the two hanging on as the time ship crashed forward, chewing through what Quinn could see was trees and foliage.

  The time ship bounced back up into the air and then slammed back into the ground with a tremendous, bone-crunching BOOM!

  Sections of the walls and flooring gave way and Quinn could see that the ship was following the contours of the land, sliding up and dipping down toward a wall of trees.

  “HOLD ON!” she screamed.

  The ship bore down and punched into the earth before jamming to a violent stop that slammed Quinn so hard against a metal console that she nearly blacked out.

  Smoke filled what was left of the time ship, emergency buzzers sounding, small fires burning, lights flashing before quickly winking out.

  Quinn lay in a sweat-glazed heap alongside Hayden, the sound of blood roaring in her ears. She gasped for air like a drowning woman and then Hayden sprang to his feet and heaved her up.

  Her legs quivered like jelly as Hayden began pulling her through the ruined time ship, whispering something about the wreckage potentially catching fire and exploding. She staggered forward through the twisted remains of the ship, trailing Hayden, amazed that any of them had survived the crash landing.

  She stopped only once to retrieve a section of sharpened metal that she used to hack away the cables and conduits that hung from what was left of the time ship’s ceiling.

  After hacking through the wreckage, Quinn and Hayden collapsed outside in a broad section of grass that had been flattened during the crash of the vessel. The bodies of several Syndicate soldiers lay nearby, bent and broken, the air heavy with the odor of burning fuel and clouds of dust and smoke that swirled, obscuring visibility.

  Quinn searched for, but couldn’t spot the others. Hayden called out and heard shouts and guided by this, the two found the others on the far side of what was left of the time ship. They were bruised and battered, their exposed flesh scratched and welted, but everyone was alive and standing, aside from Cody who was on his back on the ground. He looked to be sleeping peacefully, Giovanni kneeling at his side.

  The others began peppering Quinn with questions, but she ignored them, walking in a circle, a zombified look in her eyes. She moved forward and knelt beside Cody and Giovanni. She was overcome with emotion upon seeing Cody. His body looked lifeless, but she leaned in close and watched his chest rise and fall. A lump formed in her throat as she fought off tears, grateful that he was alive.

  “He kept babbling something about ‘The Ancient Ones’ when the ship started up and then just passed out,” Giovanni said. He stared at her in horror. “The things we saw…”

  Quinn kissed a finger and placed it on Cody’s cheek, before looking back at the others.

  “What the hell happened up there?” she asked.

  “We were hoping you’d be able to answer that,” Milo said.

  “And somebody tell me why the fuck Renner has a robotic hand,” Hayden said.

  Renner wearily held up his metallic arm for every
one to see.

  “It was all ready, in a sense, wasn’t it?” Giovanni muttered. “We all got sent back to some other loop, maybe parallel worlds.”

  Quinn responded with silence, slowly surveying the terrain around the crash site. The time ship had crashed into something and belly-flopped onto a section of woodlands filled with fifteen-foot trees and lots of creeper vines and pioneer plants. The kind of regrowth that appears after an older forest is leveled and the ground recently churned up, she thought.

  The nose of the time ship had gouged a trench in the soft soil that was nearly forty yards long and more than sixty feet wide. The debris from the crash was strewn all around, lying on the mounds of weed-filled dirt littered with what looked like white sticks that rose up on either side of the trench.

  Quinn stood and fought her way up the edge of the trench until she was standing on one of the mounds, the ground spongy underfoot. She looked in every direction, mentally dissecting the flight path the time ship had taken. She could see stands of trees in the distance, the tops having been lopped off by the vessel as it crashed.

  And out beyond that were banners of smoke rising up from the fiery remains of another plane or space ship of some kind. Quinn couldn’t make out precisely what kind of craft it was, but given its location, she discerned that the two ships had collided with each other on the way down. That was likely the reason that the back of the time ship had been ripped away. Well beyond this, several miles in the distance, objects were visible in the foggy, overcast sky. What might be planes or helicopters … or drones.

  Several of the objects seemed to be loitering or moving slowly in their general direction. Beneath this, was the obscured outline of what looked like buildings, a large city situated well beyond housing tracts and neighborhood streets. In short, the hallmark of suburbia, the kinds of things Quinn remembered from the days before the Syndicate had arrived. The one thing that puzzled her was that there looked to be something surrounding the city. What was it? A wall? She squinted, but couldn’t make out precisely what it was. She could see an immense monument of some sort rising up behind the structure. She’d been to Washington, D.C. on a high school field trip and for a moment, the cityscape faintly resembled what she remembered it looking like.