by Craig Zerf
Once inside he paused, breathing deeply, eyes partially closed as he let his seeker-sense flow through the building. Seeking the stone. At first it was impossible. Now that he knew that the Arkane Stone was there, and he had opened his mind to it, it was as if it was right next to him. Shouting in both of his ears. Blinding him with its blue-white light. Overwhelming him completely. It was like trying to sense the position of a glass of water in a town swimming pool. Impossible.
He pulled back, leaving a small window open.
Walked down the stairs. Alert. Silent. Axe at the ready.
‘Two flights down,’ he whispered to himself as he carried on down the steps. He counted the flights and exited the stairwell, opening the door carefully and stepping out into the corridor.
Unfortunately the Arkane Stone had filled his senses to the point where his usual supernatural ability to sense the enemy was subdued to a mere mortal level as he walked straight into three Highmen guards.
One of the guards drew his pistol and fired. Nathaniel felt the tug of the lead shot as it grazed his shoulder and then hit the wall behind him. The marine flicked his axe sideways, aiming for the Highman’s neck. But the fact that the alien was over seven foot tall meant that the marine misjudged and the axe head bit deeply into the Highman’s shoulder, almost severing his left arm. There was a spray of deep blue blood and he went down, emitting a high pitched formless wail. A steam kettle come to the boil.
A light flared in Nathaniel’s mind as the Arkane Stone reacted to the death of the Highman. An acknowledgment of a sort. But inhuman. Crystalline. A mere response as opposed to an emotional reaction.
He pushed the presence aside and danced forward, his axe swinging in an arc around his head. Before the other two Highmen could react, he had them sliced and diced, lying dead on the floor.
The marine walked down the corridor, heading for an open doorway at the end, knowing the stone was there. It called to him. A siren song of power. He entered the chamber and saw it. Standing in the center of the room on a simple iron plinth. About the size of an American football. Pulsating with blue-white light. A heartbeat.
And it greeted him, its recognition a sibilance of disjointed consonants. A ragged hiss with the cadence of a language. But he could make out one phrase. A sentence that stood out amongst the unintelligible mental garble.
Forever Man.
He stepped forward and picked up the stone.
Surprisingly it had no weight at all. It was as smooth as unblemished skin and was the same temperature as The Forever Man’s flesh. This, combined with its total weightlessness, meant that it was impossible to actually feel. It was like holding a handful of nothing. A mere space, full of light but with no substance.
He put it into his jacket pocket, buttoned it up and headed back down the corridor, feeling slightly anticlimactic. It was almost as though it had been too easy.
He opened the door to the stairwell. And at least ten bodies thundered out, charging into him and bowling him over. He rolled hard to get out of the way and then jumped to his feet. His hands moved with snakelike speed as he drew his two pistols and fired. There was no need to aim as the Highmen were almost pushed up against him in a solid wall. He squeezed the triggers as fast as he could and fanned the weapons from right to left as he did so. The pistols barked and sang as they hammered out lead shot at a rate of almost six rounds per second each, tearing into the close packed flesh in front of him.
In the blink of an eye he had killed another four Highmen. He dropped the empty handguns, unclipped his axe and leapt forward, moving and dancing and swinging.
Highmen fired back at him, their weapons spitting out lead like mechanical cobras. Some of the rounds found their mark, smacking into Nathaniel’s legs, chest and arms. But many other shots did more harm than good as they missed the marine and struck, instead, other Highmen who fell to the floor in welters of blood.
The axe did its ballet of death and Nathaniel stepped with it, maiming and killing in a poetry of economic movement.
And all the while the Stone sang to him in its crystal-sharp voice.
Acknowledging him. Idolizing him with vespers and evensong.
The Forever Man.
He sprinted up the stairs and burst out onto the roof. Brett was already seated in the cockpit of the power glider, waiting. Nathanial jumped into the seat behind her and patted her on the shoulder.
‘Let’s go.’
She opened the valve to the compressed air and the engine spun smoothly, dragging the machine forward and off the top of the building. The marine felt like his stomach had climbed into his mouth as the machine plummeted earthwards, building up enough speed to create some lift. Finally, mere feet from the ground, Brett pulled back on the joystick and they climbed skywards, weaving left and right to avoid smashing into the buildings.
Wordlessly she set course for the interior, using the thermals and the jet streams to provide propulsion as she cut the compressed air in order to save as much power as she could.
And the Stone sang its song, filling Nathaniel’s mind.
Communing with him.
Knowing him.
Chapter 46
The Leviathan staggered through the skies like a drunken sailor. Graceless and ungainly, no longer the queen of the air. Its single surviving engine beat an unsteady pulse as it hiccoughed along at barely quarter power and all about it smoke poured from fires that had only partly been extinguished. The airframe groaned and squealed and air rushed through the shattered gondola, threatening to shake the bridge to pieces as it tore through the massive wounds in the side of the ship.
Ethan flinched as his mother pulled tight the stitches that she had just inserted in his cheek. He still could not believe that they had escaped. When their demise had been written plain for all to see, they had received help from the most unlikely of places. And it was with disbelief and elation that he had seen the ground based steam harpoons engage the Highman fleet and tear into them. So, while the fleet was taking evasive action, the Leviathan had snuck away, limping over the horizon like a thief in the night.
The admiral stood and stared out of the observation window, tapping his foot, his expression thunderous.
Ethan had explained the whys and wherefores to his father. Starting from his meeting with Nathaniel when he had saved him outside the bar, through to the present, including the attacks on the Highmen columns and factories as well as the marines claim on immortality.
He had also told him of Nathaniel’s plan to steal the Arkane Stone and, somehow, use it to defeat the Highmen. But even as he had spoken he realized how tenuous the plan seemed. How close to wishful thinking it was. The ultimate straw grasping, last ditch attempt to salvage an untenable situation.
Needless to say, the admiral was less than impressed.
‘You have risked the lives of your entire family for a farce,’ he shouted.
Ethan shook his head. ‘I apologize. I had no idea that the Highmen would arrest you all. But I must disagree, it is no farce. What we were doing was wrong.’
‘Rubbish,’ snapped the admiral. ‘What are the lives of a few mutants to us? The Highmen were good to us. We had it all, prestige, riches, respect.’
‘No, father,’ disagreed Ethan. ‘We had money, but no respect. Whatever you say, one cannot put a good face on what was ostensibly genocide. Our actions were destroying the land, the mutants and the humans. We were wrong.’
The admiral shook his head. ‘My son,’ he said. ‘Don’t you see what you have done? You have passed a death penalty on all involved. There is no way that we will survive this uprising. I thank you and your crew for the rescue, you all showed great bravery. But all that you have done is postpone the inevitable. Why, I doubt that we will survive the night coming. This ship is finished, there is no way that we can repair it and, within a few days your precious Forever Man will be dead. The Highmen will come after him, they will find him and they will destroy him. So, even if he could carry out that insan
e plan of his, it will come to naught. Because dead men achieve nothing.’
Ethan refrained from answering, instead he leaned over the speaker tube and called own. ‘Chief, full slow on engine, zero bubble, maintain status. Try to keep her stable. Heave to.’
‘Heaving to, captain.’
‘What are you doing?’ Yelled the admiral. ‘We’re sitting ducks out here. Why are you stopping.’
Again, Ethan did not answer. He simply stood. Waiting. Hoping that his presumptions were correct.
A minute later they proved to be so as the ground below them started to move, opening up to reveal a massive entrance to the underground hanger that was part of the Dreamlanders’ civilization.
And the admiral’s mouth hung open in astonishment as Ethan slowly nudged the Leviathan into the underground lair.
Chapter 47
The very lynchpin of their existence had been torn free. The gift from the Ancients had been stolen. Ripped from their clutches by a mere…Human!
Chief Highman Alou had sent fast messengers out across the land. The Highmen armies were already prepping for war but now their mission had changed. There was only one goal. One end game.
The Arkane Stone had to be retrieved.
And Alou, along with most of the senior Highmen, knew in what general vicinity the Stone was. It pulled at them like a loadstone to an iron sword.
A beacon of light in the dark.
The Stone was in the center of the interior. The badlands.
It would take the Highmen a minimum of two days to regroup and travel there.
Forty eight hours until the Stone was theirs once more.
Chapter 48
Brett had dropped him off and headed back to the Leviathan.
And now The Forever Man stood alone.
Feet slightly apart. Eyes unfocused. Both hands clutching the Arkane Stone to his chest.
Around him glowed a blue-white nimbus of light. And something else. An almost palpable presence.
Power.
With the most delicate of touches, Nathaniel linked his consciousness with that of the Stone. It was a difficult task. A melding of two totally alien perceptions. The proverbial round peg in a square hole. The Stone itself was older than time. Nathaniel sensed a past that existed prior to the callow reign of man. The first human walked the Earth some three million two hundred thousand years ago. To the Arkane Stone it was but a blink in time. In itself the Stone was not powerful, it was a mere receptacle. A vault in which almost unbelievable amounts of arcane power had been stored. But much had been used up during the Highmen’s flight from their dying world. The Ancients had given their lives, their very essence, to topping up the power. And it had worked, to a point. But the Stone would never again contain enough power to transport an entire nation through time and space.
The most that it could do now was to open and allow a passage between the Earth’s energy and the life force of the Highmen. Draining one to feed the other.
And The Forever Man was going to see if he could reverse that flow.
For the first twenty four hours The Forever Man simply stood and let their two conciounesess merge. Then, with agonizing slowness, he started to push out, spreading his net of power out over the land. At the same time he took with him the perceptions that made up the Stone. He let the presence free and like a prisoner released for the first time in countless eons, the Stone gazed in wonder at all that it came across. No longer was it restricted to being a simple conduit. Now it was free to roam, albeit under the auspices of The Forever Man. But it was still more freedom than it had experienced for many hundreds of years.
Nathaniel shared his memories of America when he was still young. The redwood forests. Thousands of miles of corn and wheat. Sparkling streams and rivers filled with fish. Birds flocking through clear blue skies that looked proudly on at the myriad of flora and fauna that covered that great land.
And the people. In all of their magnificent diversity. Every size and age and color and creed imaginable. All living in relatively peaceful harmony with each other.
After that he overlaid images of the pollution chocked citadels. The barren wastelands. The horrifically bent and tortured Untouchables. The gulf between the Highmen and the Humans. Thousands of square miles of land sans animals. Sans flowers. Sans life.
The Stone registered what it was seeing.
And The Forever Man kept spreading his net, pushing outwards from sea to shining sea.
Chapter 49
Although it was not always immediately apparent, the Untouchables had a hierarchical structure. Every small tribe had a leader, usually male, and a second, usually female. The male was in charge of defense and hunting and the female in charge of gathering of roots and edibles, wood and water. Many of the decisions were made in a democratic way and direct antagonism was avoided whenever possible.
This day, like every other day, had started with the clan gathering together for breakfast, squatting around the campfire, eating and communing. And then, with common reaction, every head had picked up. Tilted to one side. Listening.
As one, all members of the clan experienced the same visions.
Redwood forests. Thousands of acres of corn and wheat. Streams and rivers filled with fish. Birds flying across clear blue skies.
A vision of plenty.
And then they were gone.
The head male looked about him and he saw that all had seen the same. Some of his fellow companion’s eyes were moist with unshed tears. And deep inside he felt a painful wrench, as if something precious had been torn from him. Stolen.
Without spoken commune the clan gathered up their goods. Their weapons, food and skin tents. Then they proceeded to walk into the interior.
Seeking the source of the visions that had affected them so deeply.
And all across the badlands the same was happening to many of the mutated people.
Thousands of them.
***
The Dreamlanders had worked nonstop on repairing and restocking the Leviathan and now the airship was leaving the massive underground hanger and heading towards the center of the interior to give support to Nathaniel.
The admiral’s vociferous objections and arguments had softened somewhat as he had become exposed to the Dreamlanders and their advanced technology. This, combined with the many tales that he had heard about Nathaniel, his deeds and escapades, including his alleged past, had caused him to admit to his son that there was much more to the story than he had at first comprehended.
He still maintained that there was no chance of winning but he did acknowledge that he could see why Ethan had done what he had done. Even if he still basically disagreed with his son’s decision.
Before casting off, Ethan had insisted that his father and the rest of the family stayed with the Dreamlanders. He no longer wanted his family in the line of danger from his decisions. The admiral put up a token resistance but Ethan had insisted and farewells had been stoically carried out, goodbyes said and well wishings pronounced. And it was with relief that Ethan sailed away sans family.
It was the morning of the third day when Ethan spotted the first Highmen airships. And below them, traveling in a massive column, the mighty armies of the Highmen, heading for the center of the blighted lands.
Heading for The Forever Man.
Ethan smiled when he saw the column of Landships. It was a smile of acceptance. The expression of a man whose decisions had already been decided. A man who knew that there is no fate but that which you make.
It was the face of a human being who had finally learned the true meaning of the word, selflessness.
He picked up the speaking tube.
‘Flank speed, chief. Two degree up bubble, boilers on full burn. Let’s show these Highmen what us humans are capable of.’
‘The sound of laughter floated up the brass tube. ‘Aye aye, captain. It’s balls to the wall time.’
***
Like a net made of finest gossamer, Nathaniel h
ad covered the entire landmass that used to be known as the United States of America. And woven in with his net were the threads of crystalline-consciousness that was the Arkane Stone.
But try as he might, the marine could not convince the Stone to surrender its hold on the bridge that spanned between The Soul of the World, or the Archeus and the essence of the Highmen. For six hundred years the Stone had done that one single thing and now it was as if that was its single reason for being. In as far as its crystal logic was concerned, if it forgoed its reason for being it would at the same time forgo its very existence.
And as far as Nathaniel knew, the Stone could very likely be correct, however he allowed no negative feelings to enter his consciousness. Instead he filled the Stone with thoughts of love and self sacrifice. Of devotion and altruism.
Gandhi. Jesus. Mohamed. Buddha.
Slowly, cell by cell and level by level, the Stone began to comprehend.
At the very edges of his sight, Nathaniel sensed the approach of the Highmen. And he knew that he simply did not have enough time left to do what had to be done. But, as this was his final Hail Mary pass, he simply kept at it.
Because, not only did he need to get the Stone to relinquish its hold, he also had to get it to reverse the bridge. He needed the Stone to draw the power from the Highmen into itself and then give it back to the earth. To infuse the land. Like a gigantic planetary blood transfusion.
Chapter 50
There was no plan. What was the point? They were outnumbered by a ratio of literally hundreds, if not thousands, to one. It was simply a question of how much damage they could inflict before they were blown to pieces.
So Ethan just lined the Leviathan up broadside to the oncoming column and opened up with all that he had. Steam harpoons thundered and mallet guns shrieked.