The Battle for Terra Two

by Stephen Ames Berry

  “To safety.” Back in his chair, Detrelna poured another drink for himself. “Join me, Hanar.” He indicated the captain’s almost untouched glass.

  As Lawrona sat on the armchair, blaster in hand, Detrelna slipped the commwand into the desktop reader. “Computer,” he said, “Scan, read aloud and file contents to main memory, command access only.”

  They listened for the rest of the watch, Detrelna making an occasional note. When it ended, the shield was back up and the brandy half gone.

  “So,” said Detrelna, setting down his pen, “if this is all true, we need Harrison.”

  “If it’s true,” said Lawrona, “yes.”

  “We’ll have to brief the Terrans,” said Detrelna.

  “And our ambassador?”

  “After the Terrans,” said Detrelna firmly.

  “He’ll scream,” said Lawrona.

  “Let him. Security of the Confederation—military priority.”

  “Communications,” said the commodore into the commlink, “get me the American Central Intelligence Director, Bill Sutherland.” He glanced at the time readout, doing a quick conversion. “He’s probably at home, asleep. Get him up. Tell him we’ve one last world to win.”

  Chapter 2

  “Hear from Zahava?” asked McShane, helping himself to another cup of John’s coffee.

  “Early yesterday.” Using a fork, he slid the waffles from the little electric oven onto the two plastic microwave plates. “There’s a seven-hour time difference between here and Israel.”

  “How’s her sister doing?”

  “Better. Cardiac’s a tricky thing, though. Syrup?” he asked, putting a plate in front of McShane.

  They faced each other across the breakfast bar; McShane stolid, white-bearded, with red suspenders stretching from the top of his corduroys over his blue flannel shirt; John, thirty years his junior, in faded jeans and a read cardigan.

  “No, thank you. No waffle, either.” He pushed the food back, thumb and forefinger to the plate edge. “TV-dinner plates, pop-up breakfasts. You’re living on this swill?”

  “Not worth cooking for one,” said John, squeezing a layer of cold syrup across the waffle. The sunlight flooding the kitchen lent the topping the look of thick, yellowed varnish.

  “When’s she coming home?” asked McShane, adding milk to his coffee.

  “It could be a few months. Natie’s got two kids and there’s no one else to help.”

  “What brings you to the Hill so early in the day, Bob?”

  “Checkup.” He tapped his chest. “Iron-poor blood or something. I’m not twenty-nine anymore, but I shouldn’t need a four-hour nap every afternoon.”

  The phone rang. John reached out, taking the receiver from the wall. He listened for a few seconds, then hung up.

  “Wrong number?” asked Bob, sipping his coffee.

  John shook his head. “My former employer, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “A voice I’ve never heard hit me with a hot-shit authenticator and the words ‘Gather at the river. Thirty minutes.’”

  “What, the Potomac?”

  “Yes. I know where—it’s a stretch along the canal in Georgetown.”

  “When I was a boy,” said McShane, “back in the Pleistocene, kids used to run off to join the circus. Your crowd ran off to join the CIA.” He set his cup down. “Are you driving?”

  “No.” John rose, taking the dishes to the sink. “Car’s in the shop for a brake job.”

  “I can drop you at Foggy Bottom.” He tucked in the bar stool. “Wear your mitties—it’s cold out there.”

  “You need a what?” Harrison stared at Sutherland.

  “A hero,” said the CIA Director. “We need a hero.”

  “A hero’s a sandwich, Bill.” He watched as a sudden gust sent a yellow-red cloud of maple leaves swirling into the canal. “Or a word in a eulogy.”

  A chill October wind had driven all but the hardiest joggers from the towpath. More would venture out later, after work, but for now the two men had the Georgetown riverfront to themselves.

  “Guan-Sharick can get you there,” said Sutherland, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his camel-hair topcoat. “You have to get yourself back.”

  “By taking the other end of this Shalan’s portal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why me? Why not a transmute?” As they walked, he turned the collar of his parka against the wind. “Our old buddy Guan-Sharick could just rip out some poor bastard’s mind, imitate him, turn this resistance movement against Shalan-Actal and his base.” Stooping, he picked up a flat stone. “Find another hero, Bill. I’ve retired.” He skimmed the weathered shale across the brackish canal surface, one-two-three. It sank midchannel.

  “There’s no one else,” said Sutherland. “And Guan-Sharick can’t steal a dead man’s mind.” He took the photo from his pocket. “Here’s who you’d be replacing.”

  John stared at the snapshot. The man was in his mid-thirties, sandy-haired, blue-eyed, with a familiar ironic grin. He wore a jet-black dress uniform and high-peaked cap with gleaming visor. “Me,” said John. “Only not me.” He looked up. “My double on Terra Two?”

  “Your dead double,” said the CIA Director, taking back the photo. “Major Harrison was killed in a motorcycle accident last week. Very T.E. Lawrence, but very bad timing. He’d just finished his doctoral dissertation at McGill and was to report to his new post in Boston.”

  “Guan-Sharick was going to replace him?”

  Sutherland nodded. “He saw the accident and disposed of the remains. Then he flicked through Shalan’s portal and appealed to Detrelna and Lawrona for help.”

  “Now that I’d like to have seen,” smiled John. The smile faded. “So in another reality, I’m a corpse.” He pointed to the photo. “What’s that shroud he’s wearing?”

  “Class-A uniform—CIA Counter Insurgency Brigade. Sort of a Yankee doodle Waffen SS, now fighting in Mexico.”

  “Mexico?”

  “But he’s been seconded to the Urban Command garrison in Boston as an intelligence officer.” Sutherland laughed at Harrison’s expression. “You’re going to love Terra Two, John.”

  “I’m not going to Terra Two.” He looked across the Potomac, watching as a jet skirted the towers in Rosslyn, heading in to National Airport.

  The CIA Director’s smile faded. “No one else can do it. If you don’t go, bugs and killer machines will come swarming into this reality. They have to be stopped on Terra Two. And you’re elected. Or rather, Major Harrison with his ganger connections is.”

  “I won’t ask what a ganger is, Bill,” said John, facing Sutherland. “And I’m not elected—I wasn’t running. I don’t work for you anymore, I don’t free-lance anymore, and I don’t believe anything Guan-Sharick would say.”

  “We have to assume he’s telling the truth,” said Sutherland. “To not do so would be criminally irresponsible.”

  “You’re saying I’m irresponsible?”

  It was Sutherland’s turn to gaze across the river. “You left the Outfit in a tiff . . .”

  Harrison’s face flushed, not from the cold. “No one pisses my people away.”

  “And you were getting bored with the freelance stuff when the Kronarins showed up,” continued the director. “Then the Biofab War, that battle under the Moon. Blasters, mindslavers, starships, Pocsym, Scotar. Then it ended. Boom!” He turned back to Harrison. “You married your Israeli friend, wrote a book about the Biofab War and made an obscene amount of money.”

  “Am making.”

  “And now that you’re the only one in this whole frigging universe who may be able to save it . . .”

  “Really, Bill.”

  “You won’t go. Why not?” He snapped out the last two words, like a drill instructor.

  “I don’t want to die,” said John easily. “That’s a one-way trip.”

  “You haven’t a choice, buddy. You go, or we all die.”

  “I have a ch
oice.”

  “Crock,” said Sutherland. He held out the tan attaché case. “Take this. Read it. It’s everything Guan-Sharick gave the Kronarins. Give it back to me tomorrow at nine, along with your decision. Scholl’s Restaurant on K Street—toward the back.”

  John took it. They walked in silence to the footbridge, crossed it and stepped down into the hilly side street. “Can I drop you?” said Sutherland. “Long walk to Capitol Hill.”

  John shook his head. “I need the air.”

  He was crossing Fourteenth Street and the sleaze strip when the young blonde in the bimbo outfit fell into step beside him. “Something soft and warm for lunch, sir?” she asked.

  “No.” John quickened his pace.

  She kept up with him as he moved past a row of strip joints. “It must be lonely, with Zahava away.”

  Stopping, he turned, seeing her for the first time. “You.”

  “Indeed,” said Guan-Sharick. “The reports of my death—”

  “I heard.”

  The Scotar appeared to slip an arm through his. “Let’s stroll a bit—John and hooker.”

  He fell in reluctantly beside the transmute. “What do you want?”

  “Everyone asks that,” sighed the blonde. Her china-blue eyes met his. “You know what I want. Harrison, Shalan-Actal’s transmutes are gunning for me, so I’ll make it short. I know Sutherland just briefed you—laid the moral imperative on you. Will you go?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly.

  “Harrison,” said the Scotar urgently, “if those machines establish a bridgehead in this universe, it’s all over—for you, for us, for all intelligent life. They’ll wipe Shalan the second he’s no longer needed. One of their battle units is five times the size of the Kronarin Fleet. Harrison, they have over ten thousand battle units! Maybe the Imperial Fleet could have stood against them—nothing of this time can.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Some few of us can receive their internal communications—cold, alien thoughts, dedicated to the death of all sapient life. The dead hand that programmed them created an undying malevolence. We either stop them now, one reality away, or we’re all dead meat.”

  “We?” John shook his head. “I don’t trust you, bug.”

  “Trust this then,” said the blonde coldly. “Your wife’s visiting in Israel. She’s now seated in the Café Hertzel, on Jerusalem’s Dizendorf Street, sipping Turkish coffee from a white, chipped demitasse cup. Her girlfriend tells an anecdote—your wife laughs, her brown eyes sparkling. I’ve but to signal and she’s dead. And I will, unless you help us.”

  Harrison laughed bitterly. “Kill her if you want. We’re getting divorced. Zahava’s gone home to stay.”

  “Fine,” shrugged the blonde.

  “No!” John grabbed the Scotar by the shoulders, ashen-cheeked.

  The transmute smile quizzically. “Bluffing?”

  “Yes.” He dropped his hands.

  “I wasn’t.”

  “She’s not . . .”

  “No. Your tough little hellcat’s safe, Harrison. For now.”

  They resumed their slow walk, the lunchtime crowd flowing around them.

  “I’m glad that’s resolved,” said the transmute. “I’ll be taking you through the portal to Terra Two, tomorrow at noon.”

  “Why then?” asked John, wanting very much to kill Guan-Sharick.

  “It’s the only time for the next seven months that my loyalists will have charge of both sides of the portal. I could get you through now, but not without some commotion.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we slip you into Major Harrison’s new posting—Boston. There you’ll contact the resistance, and lead them against Shalan-Actal’s outpost in Vermont, escaping just before they blow up the portal device.”

  “Either you’re crazy,” said John, “or you’ve set this all up very carefully,”

  They stopped at the corner of Fourteenth and H streets, waiting for the light.

  “Major Harrison was a resistance sympathizer,” said the transmute. “His assignment to Boston was arranged by certain elements of the CIA for the very purpose we want—disposal of Shalan’s covert outpost on Terra Two.”

  “You had nothing to do with that, I suppose?”

  “Me?” said the blonde, wide-eyed.

  “Why aren’t those killer machines trundling down the street, slaughtering away?” asked John as the traffic rolled past. “The portal works. The machines are on Terra Two.”

  “Not in great strength. And there’s a problem with the linkage between Terra Two and the machines’ universe. You have to close the portal from Terra Two to here before machine reinforcements reach Terra Two.”

  They didn’t notice the light flashing. Pedestrians streamed around them. “Take an army through, seize the portal,” said John.

  “Shalan would disengage the portal device before even a platoon got through. My loyalists hold only a few key points on both sides—not enough to mask the hosts of humanity.”

  “We’re going to miss the light.” They hurried across as the warning light blinked.

  “Read the briefing book,” said Guan-Sharick as they continued down H Street. “I know it. I’ll be at your town house tomorrow morning, at eleven. Then we’ll flick through the portal to Terra Two.” The Scotar stopped in front of a junk electronics store, back to a doorway full of kids and the blare of punk rock. “Make sure you—”

  Movement caught John’s eye. From across the entrance’s “Odds & Ends” table, a tall black kid with a Mohawk was aiming a shotgun mike at Guan-Sharick.

  “Down!” shouted John. He tumbled the blonde to the pavement as an azure-blue blaster bolt snapped over their heads, exploding a flower delivery van in a great Whump! of pillaring flame.

  Screaming. People scattering. Burning bits of roses, mums and driver rained down. Across the street, a car alarm hooted.

  The gunman stepped around the table. John tried to untangle himself from Guan-Sharick, tugging at the pistol inside his parka. The transmute held him, pinioned, as the blank-faced killer aimed from five feet away.

  The street was gone. John saw a room flash by: Scotar warriors, raising their rifles, more blue blaster bolts. A dark pool closed over him, cotton-soft and cold.

  Another, bigger area: harsh, blinding light, blaster fire. Gone.

  Guan-Sharick let him go. They were in a hotel room, all umber and teak—twin beds, a desk, two chairs, double dresser, TV, curtained window. The transmute held Sutherland’s attaché case.

  Dropping the attaché case, Guan-Sharick sank onto a bed, hand to shoulder, crimson blood oozing through the fingers. John’s parka was splotched the same red. “Shalan’s killers?” asked Harrison.

  “Shalan’s killers,” said the Scotar. “Without me, Harrison, you wouldn’t have lived until morning. You’re the only John Harrison I have left. So we went through the portal, hard and fast.”

  “Where are we?”

  “The Toronto Hilton.”

  “And why are you bleeding red?”

  “One projects either a whole illusion or none,” said the transmute. A Scotar sat on the bed, a tentacle clamped over a torn thorax, green oozing through the exoskeleton.

  John looked at his parka. It was daubed with green blood.

  The blonde and the red blood reappeared. “This isn’t clotting fast enough,” said Guan-Sharick. “Cold compress, please.”

  Going into the small bathroom, John ran a white hand towel under the sink faucet. Returning to the bedroom, he tossed it to the Scotar.

  “You’re too kind,” said the blonde, catching it.

  “For you, anything. Now what?”

  “Now you take off your jacket and do your homework,” said the Scotar, applying the compress. “Terra Two, modern history. U.S., Western Europe and the Soviet Union, current history and relationship. Boston, demographics and current history. CIA, order of battle. CIA combat brigade, mission, current deployment and order o
f battle. Urban Command, Boston, table of organization. Biographies—Major Harrison, Colonel Aldridge, Captain MacKenzie, his sister, Dr. Heather MacKenzie, and Wehrmacht Hauptmann Erich zur Linde.” The blonde lay back on the bed, eyes on the white-stippled ceiling. “There’s also a précis of Major Harrison’s doctoral dissertation in there. You might skim it—it’s rather good.

  “Wake me when you’re ready for interrogation.” Guan-Sharick’s eyes closed.

  “Hold it,” said John. The blonde’s eyes opened. “How long do I have?”

  “Major Harrison’s booked on tomorrow’s eight p.m. flight to Boston—he’s being met. There’s a four-hour uptime difference between Terra One and Two. You have about twenty-two hours. The coffee shop’s open all night, mezzanine level. Bill it to your room number. They do a nice Spanish omelet. Do take that bloody parka off first.” Guan-Sharick’s eyes closed again.

  Dropping his coat on the desk chair, John went to the window and drew back the curtain. Their room was at least fifteen stories up. Cars moved along the boulevard below; lights shone from the buildings opposite. It could have been any downtown nightscape in any of a hundred cities.

  Turning back to the room, he put the attaché case on the desk and opened it. Taking out the familiar blue-vinyl CIA briefing book, he settled into the armchair, opening with a sigh to the first of some two hundred pages.

  “I feel like a centurion being sent across the Rhine,” said John. He and the Scotar were walking down the Air Canada concourse. Harrison wore the black uniform of an Urban Command major, leather flight bag slung over his shoulder.

  “More like Hadrian’s Wall,” said Guan-Sharick. “A position of limited retreat.” The Scotar seemed recovered from its wound, striding briskly beside John, cheeks ruddy with health, golden hair cascading over white cable-knit sweater. Faded jeans, docksiders and powder-blue down jacket completed the image.

  “What if I can’t take the portal?” asked John as they reached the boarding gate.

  “Then you’ll be staying on Terra Two—you won’t like it. And don’t look for help from above. There are no Kronarins in this reality—we checked. Where Kronar should be is an asteroid belt.”