The Koda Files Boxed Set - Books 1 & 2

by Ivan Bridgewater

  "All matter vibrates at variant frequencies," noted Bugs, deep in thought. "If you were to take control of the frequencies of each creature, you might be able to control them to some degree." I could see into his mind as he ran over the information. He abruptly looked up at all of us, and said, "It's possible, we could use it to free people from the outside control of whatever were fighting!"

  Madias stepped in now, saying, "Am I to understand, that you believe you can nullify the power the Darkness uses, and do it over a large area?"

  Bugs seemed deep in thought for several seconds. Then he looked right at Madias, and said, "I can mess up anything really close if I can get it to work. I don't know what kind of range it will have, but it will reach farther than a hand grenade. I’ll need to do some tests. It’ll take time, but if it works, the battle I can see in your recent memories, would have looked a lot different."

  "And Shooter would still be alive," Harold said quietly. Everyone in the room looked at him. We all knew he was probably right.

  "You begin to see now what we're up against," said Madias. "This will be unlike any enemy you ever pursed. It is extremely deadly, and deceptive. Given a chance, it will destroy you without remorse."

  So much anger and hatred was streaming from Koda, that I reached over and put my hand on her shoulder. She was startled, and jumped slightly. Looking over at me, I could sense her relax slightly. She was wound up tightly. I guess in truth, we all were.

  "I've seen all kinds of fights, but nothing like that," observed Kathy.

  "It was a cleansing party," stated Madias. "That location was one of several hit today! We took heavy loses, but at your point of intervention, the tide was turned. In no small part, because of you and your team." He glanced around the room, and said, "You are already engaged in this war. After today, there is no turning back. You are all involved too deeply to just walk away now."

  "We should have had better Intel," growled Harold. "We dropped in blind, and got our asses handed to us!"

  "It was my fault," I pointed out. "I should have told you to withdraw as soon as we knew it was a trap! I was too focused on the women and kids. What started out as a rescue, grew to be something far more."

  "No amount of Intel could have prepared you for this," Madias disagreed. "You did what was important! You sounded the alarm! More importantly, you stood your ground, when others might have run! You are already tested, and showed your ability to fight. Now let us train you to fight a new battle! One that may yet decide the future of everything you love!"

  "It's fair to say we're all going to follow the Chosen into this," said Kathy. "So what's the first step?"

  "You took that last month when you joined the Chosen," Madias noted. "Now we must bring you up to speed on the weapons, and tactics, of a Guardian. It normally takes a year to bring an Earther up to speed. But for you folks, I believe we can easily cut that in half." He eyed Koda and I, saying, "You two may require some special training, but your natural skills may eliminate the need for some of that extra time spent."

  "So, we're going to war with the Universe," observed Koda.

  I hesitated, and then said, "I'd say, the Universe is already at war, and now we're trying to catch up."

  "This is a great day in the battle against the Darkness," Madias said, seemingly to himself. He looked back up at me, saying, "You are the strong right flank in the battle we now find ourselves in. For now, hold your ground, and prepare. The days of training will be over, all too soon. I’ll try to check back when I can, but you must work with Dona and her people for now."

  "I don't care for her sword training techniques much," I said, more than half seriously.

  "Ahem! Yes!" he agreed. "You’ve already shown you can beat their best. You won't be getting much more of that kind of training."

  "Which is his way of saying he has worse things coming up," Koda noted, giving me a long look. We could both see in his mind what was coming. We would be leaving Earth soon, and fighting battles on worlds far beyond our Galaxy. Our world would be left behind, and we would be called upon to stand against the Darkness.

  When we parted ways with Madias that evening, I knew that we were doing the right thing. We all went outside and stood talking for a minute, before Madias left. It was sunset, and the sky was beautiful, with deep blue and red streaks cutting through the towering white clouds. Madias thanked me again, shook my hand, and then folded space, disappearing right in front of us.

  I don't know if I'll ever get used to teleportation. Maybe I'm just too old for all this space stuff.

  Guess I better hurry up, and get over it.

  Chapter 19

  Close

  It has been several days now since the attack in South America. We are trying to pull it together, but the loss of Shooter had been a horrible blow, and we are all on edge. Madias has put us on alert, we may be called up at any time. For now, we are on light duty. Tim is acting a little shell-shocked after the fight, and I can tell he is really having some headaches.

  I started this diary thinking it would be my last. So much has changed. My one regret, is that Nancy isn't here. If Madias and Dona are right, I’ll finally have my vengeance for her murder. I guess it's what I live for at this point.

  I've decided it's time to close this diary, and start a new one. If I use the last few weeks and months as a gauge, I’ll have plenty to write about.

  As I close this book, my finally thoughts are of Nancy! I miss you! Every minute, of every day! I miss you!

  The End

  The

  Koda Files

  Training

  Koda

  Don't hate her for being deadly

  It's the way nature made her

  The

  Koda Files

  Book Two

  Training Koda

  By

  Ivan M. Bridgewater Jr.

  Chapter 1

  Adapting

  It has been almost two months since I last wrote in my diary. It has been a busy year, and every day brings new surprises. I'm sixty years old, and have kept a personal journal since I was seventeen. So much has happened in the last few months, I feel compelled to start a new one, with a brief synopsis of what is happening in my life right now.

  Once. A long time ago. I was a hit man for the American government. Somewhere along the way, I decided that wasn't a good thing, and walked away. This was precipitated by me being ordered to kill several small children. I refused, and returned to kill my handlers. The very people who sent me to kill the kids.

  Killing those men, caused me to go on the run. I built a new life for myself, and was happily married for twenty years. It appeared I had escaped my past. Then my wife died, and I soon found out her death was a murder. I quickly fell back onto my old vices, killing everyone who got in my way.

  This reawakening has come with some very strange twists and turns. I'm not sure how to explain them all, but here goes.

  The first thing that occurred was, I met Koda Hackman. She was just a young girl, but she was already a deadly assassin. I watched her kill five men in mere seconds, and when I didn't help her, she came after me. Tracking me to my home, she broke in, and tried to kill me.

  That was a mistake that she was lucky to survive. I suspect that I was becoming senile, because not only did I not kill her, I helped her, and gave her shelter.

  During the process of resolving Koda's personal problems, I found myself once again returning to my old, violent, habits. I called upon old allies for assistance. The first ghost team I ever trained returned to life, and we prepared to take out the trash, as we had done many times over the years.

  It was during this process that an amazing thing occurred. It came to our attention, that our team had been compromised. Several of our people had been exposed to an enzyme that caused their minds to go through a transformation. When they recovered, they had developed telepathy, and the ability to scan, or read, another person's mind. It also gave them the ability to teleport through space
, and to heal many of their own wounds.

  Before long, everyone on the team had been exposed, and our eyes were soon opened to a world we never dreamed existed.

  There are vast forces at work in the cosmos, and if steps aren't taken, the end of life on Earth is near. A great evil, collectively known as "The Darkness" is attacking the Milky Way Galaxy as we speak. It is bent on the destruction of all life in our galaxy.

  Standing against the Darkness, is a widely varied assortment of forces. I myself don't understand all of what's happening, but I'm starting to understand most of the major players in the battle.

  The primary force against the Darkness, is a group known as the Guardians. They are part of an ancient race known as the First Ones. The Guardians work like police, or port customs personnel, keeping the Earth isolated because of something called the Madness. It is like a form of Rabies, and all Earthers have it to some degree.

  Have you ever watched the news, and seen where somebody lost their mind, killing and eating their family. That was caused by the Madness. Without the Madness, you become capable of all the great things I listed earlier. Telepathy, teleportation and much more are all yours. Just be exposed to a simple enzyme, and you too can join a group known as the "Chosen" and be free of the Madness.

  I have, in fact, been caught up in all this. I’ve been freed of the Madness, and have developed a host of strange powers, including the ability to heal instantly from most wounds. Because of these powers, my youth, and strength, has been restored.

  I suppose all good things must come at a price, and while we avenged the death of Koda's parents, and my wife, we also became involved in a far larger war. One fought on a planetary scale. In a battle on the Amazon River, one of my best friends, a man nicknamed Shooter, was killed. His real name was Robert Preston, but nobody had called him that in years.

  Working with the group known as the Chosen, my team and I have begun training to fight an enemy I still don't really understand. For the last two months, I’ve been bringing long dormant skills back to life, and learning ways to use my newly found abilities, to destroy the forces responsible for the Madness, and the destruction of countless worlds.

  I guess you could say I’ve taken the ultimate contract. I'm out to kill an ancient evil, and for the first time in a long time, I'm sure my target deserves my wrath. I’ll make it pay for what it has done to all of us. I will have my vengeance, and insure the Madness is brought to an end, once and for all.

  Since the beginning of our dealing with the Chosen, our primary contact person has been a woman named Dona. She's a police office in Florida, and other than that, I don't want to identify her. She has been my team’s primary training officer, and we have become pretty good friends.

  Dona had been training me in the use of a device known as a power glove, and a weapon known as a powered fighting staff. The powered glove takes your own strength and amplifies it, making you immensely strong. The powered fighting staff uses the fighters own energy to power force weapons built into the staff. It can be a very powerful weapon when used in close order combat.

  Both powered items require energy from the person using them. As a result, they have limited uses. Yet in a fast, silent, fight, they can make one man equal to ten.

  I’ve been training Koda in the use of a long blade Samurai sword, just short of three feet long. I'd been chasing her around the field where we train for almost an hour, and Koda was hoping Dona would show up to train me, and save her from my continued harassment.

  "Isn't my time up?" she asked as she backed away from me. "This thing feels like it weighs two hundred pounds after the first twenty minutes! Can't I just use a gun, and ditch the sword?"

  "What happens when you run out of ammo?" I asked. "What happens if you end up in a space ship, halfway to some distant world, and get in a fight? You going to cut lose with a gun in a spacecraft, and rupture the hull?"

  Koda pointed behind me, and said, "Here comes Dona." She focused back on me, saying, "Now she can chase you around the yard for an hour."

  "You need to learn to stand and fight," I observed. "Exposing your back as a target is never a good answer."

  "It is when you're chasing me with that damned sword!" she noted emphatically.

  Dona was pulling in the driveway at this point. I sheathed the sword, and walked over to her patrol vehicle. She was still in uniform, and I got the feeling our training session had just been canceled. She looked fine, but I could see her mind was in turmoil. She had been almost killed in South America a few months ago, and several of her friends were killed. My team had pulled her out of a mound of dead bodies. It had traumatized her.

  She got out of her car, and we greeted each other like any other day. There was an awkward moment of silence, and then I asked, "What's the matter Dona? Why are you so upset?"

  To my shock, she started to cry. Her hands were trembling, and Koda and I both stepped closer to her. In a shaking voice, she said, "I just watched four cops die! There was a shootout in town!" She leaned back against the car for support. Then stood collecting her thoughts.

  "Are you injured?" I asked.

  She shook her head no. Looking up at me, she said, "I'm fine. I just felt so helpless. These cops weren't converted yet. They weren't able to fight back like one of the Chosen." There was a frustrated look in her eyes as she finished, saying, "There were TV crews and helicopters everywhere. I couldn't step in and help. I stood there, and watched them die!"

  "There's just so much you can do!" stated Koda.

  "She's right!" I said. "You have to let it go Dona!"

  "You know better!" she pointed out emphatically. "It's not been that long since we lost Shooter. Every time we lose another person, it just makes me crazy. I know it doesn't have to be this way. There will come a day the Madness will be gone from the Earth. It just pisses me off we can't do more now."

  "We have to be patient," I observed. "You know this will take time. It may even take lifetimes, but we have to try."

  "I know," Dona agreed quietly. She had regained her composer a little. Wiping her face, she stood back up, and took a deep breath. "I just get so angry every time we lose another human. It's all so needless." She stopped talking, and just stood there looking up at the sky.

  "Can we do anything to help?" I asked.

  "No," she said as her eyes looked down, and focused on me again. "I'll just have to get over it. I don't really have any choice."

  At that moment, a man named Madias folded space, and appeared before us. It's difficult to explain teleportation to a normal human. I won't even try at this point. Let's just say that being free of the Madness is very beneficial, and part of all that, is the ability to teleport yourself from one spot to another, sometimes over vast distances.

  If teleportation is hard to explain, Madias is worse. I don't believe he is human. He is ancient. I believe he may be thousands of years old. I’ve even been given the impression he may be millions of years old. I can see, I'm going to need to adjust my understanding of life spans in light of recent events.

  Stepping directly up to Dona, he said, "I just heard what happened! Are you alright?"

  Still very agitated, Dona just nodded. I heard the front door to the house open, and the property’s owner, Kathy, stepped out. As soon as she saw us, she waved for the rest of our team to follow her out. Tim, Harold, Bugs, and Lisa, all stepped out behind Kathy, and the group headed toward us.

  I had trained most of these people as assassins almost thirty years ago. Lisa, a doctor, was a more recent addition. Her husband had been a team member years ago, before they were married. After his death, she helped save my life, and has since been drawn into this whole, complicated mess.

  As Kathy approached, she loudly called out, "What's going on out here?"

  "Dona was involved in a firefight town" I said. "Several police officers she knew, were killed."

  "Good men!" Dona choked out. She was holding her emotions in check, but just barely.

  We
all stood talking for several minutes. It caught my attention that Harold never spoke. I hadn't heard him say ten words since Shooter's funeral. It had started to worry me a little. Even his thoughts seemed closed off. I was still pretty new to telepathy, and scanning another person’s mind, but I felt he needed to let Shooter's death go.

  The other thing I noticed was the way Tim was leaning on Lisa. It appeared he simply had his arm around her, but I could tell, she was supporting a lot of his weight. Tim had suffered a head injury during a battle on the Amazon River several months before. I wasn't a doctor, but I was pretty sure something was wrong.

  Dona finally looked up at me, saying, "Look! I just wanted to stop in, and let you know we won't be training today. I've had enough! I'm going home, and having a good stiff drink!"

  "Can't blame you for that," I said. "Will you be okay to drive?"

  "I'm fine," she noted as she opened the door to her sheriff’s patrol vehicle. She shook her head for a second, as though she might clear the recent memories from her mind. Then sat down in the car, waved goodbye, and drove away.

  As soon as she was out of earshot, Madias quietly said, "That woman is on the breaking point!"

  "She's been through a lot," noted Kathy. "Being a cop makes things worse as far as I'm concerned!"

  "Is there a way to send her on vacation?" I asked.

  "She barely listens to me at all," replied Madias. "She's very strong willed! I doubt she'll just take time off from her work, if that's what you mean by vacation."

  We all started to walk back into the house as a group. I hung back, watching as Lisa helped Tim back in from outside. By the time we were in the house, the rest of the group had all gone off to continue whatever they were doing when Dona and Madias arrived.