Trevor Stone sat at a square table in the center of a large meeting room. A pair of Doberman pinschers stood rigidly near the east exit. Jon Brewer and two soldiers in dress uniforms—side arms only—waited in the wings.
Chancellor D’Trayne occupied a seat on the opposite side of the table flanked by Governor Malloy and Brad Gannon. Senator Evan Godfrey stood nearby. Two Witiko guards—side arms only—covered the west exit.
"I suppose I should break the ice," Godfrey offered after two full minutes of silence.
"You have no business here," Trevor replied without even glancing at Evan.
Brand Gannon smiled and raised his hands, palms out, in a conciliatory fashion.
"Hey, let’s get this off on the right foot, right? I mean, Evan here has been a great help."
Trevor kept his eyes on Chancellor D’Trayne and paid little attention to the humans on the far side of the table. In his mind, they might as well not even be there, regardless of any political gobbledygook suggesting otherwise.
D’Trayne’s eyes wavered between light yellow and light green. The silver lotion on his cheeks sparkled. To Trevor, the make up looked ridiculous; a concession to ego the way aristocrats of centuries past would powder their faces and wear wigs.
Trevor spoke directly to the Witiko, "Evan Godfrey has no authority here, unless you need funding for a sewage project. Whatever he’s told you, forget it. I am in charge."
"That’s right," Evan broke in. "You are in charge, Trevor. I know you may be mad at me for coming here, but I did it for you. To explain to these people more about you. About how you’re not a brutal despot. I told them that there’s more to you than conquering and killing."
He tried to ignore those words but they did strike a cord, reminding Trevor of his meetings with Lori. His fears.
"That’s right, Evan. You’re absolutely right. I don’t want to fight the people of California. I don’t want to fight the Witiko."
The Chancellor’s eyes turned full green. Governor Malloy stammered then boomed, "This is great news! You are indeed a reasonable man, Trevor Stone."
Gannon echoed, "Ah, man, that’s just fantastic. Just, you know, fantastic."
Trevor did not pull his eyes from D’Trayne.
"I offer the Witiko peaceful passage through the runes to their home world."
The alien’s eyes flashed red for a moment, then green, then softened to yellow. Trevor found himself impressed by how well D’Trayne controlled his eyes considering the colors in his pupils apparently reflected his emotions.
"Aww Christ," Gannon huffed and slumped in his chair.
"The Witiko are our allies," Malloy attempted to counter the offer that Trevor had made on numerous occasions in recent months. "They are our partner and friends."
"Friends?" Trevor spat the word.
Godfrey said, "Think of how much greater we would be with the Witiko as allies. Don’t make the mistake of thinking them enemies. You don’t want to be on the wrong side again."
Again?
Trevor did not understand Evan’s reference, but it did remind him once more that, in the other universe, Trevor had fought for the wrong side.
Malloy reasoned, "If they were not our friends, then why would they have stopped fighting when they had us beat? You must remember this. It is important."
Trevor allowed a hint of a smile to curl at the edge of his mouth, but still kept his focus on the Chancellor who remained motionless and silent except for yellow to green pupils.
"They just stopped fighting, what, five years ago?"
"Yes. I remember," Malloy told Stone in a voice that suggested deep admiration for the Witiko’s gesture. "My predecessor, the former Governor who led the war effort, died in a tragic accident and I assumed the reins of leadership. I feared I would be remembered as the leader who watched humanity be destroyed. Instead, I was approached by the Chancellor who offered peace. I accepted, and together we washed the blood from our hands and forged The Cooperative."
Trevor saw why Evan liked Malloy so much; they spoke the same language.
"Do you want to know why the dear, peace-loving Chancellor sued for peace?" Trevor asked. Bright red flashed in the enemy’s pupils. D’Trayne tilted his head and willed his eyes green again. "The Witiko sued for peace because I shut down his gateway. I cut off his reinforcements and supplies."
More red. Then yellow. Then almost orange.
"The Witiko sought an end to the war because they feared their ability to fight that war. The Chancellor here found himself stranded with his foot on the throat of a dangerous enemy but all alone. So what did he do? He bargained. He bargained from what you thought was a position of strength, so you gave in because you thought you were saving yourselves but the truth is that you saved the Witiko."
"That’s a lie!" Malloy burst.
"Hey, man," Gannon tried his best to sound stern but came across as childish. "You don’t know what you’re talking about. D’Trayne here is, just, a great guy. They coulda wiped us out, but they didn’t."
"Oh no? Tell me something, Governor, what’s the human birth rate in California?"
Malloy straightened in his chair and wavered. Trevor held a hand aloft.
"Don’t bother, I’ll tell you. You’re at zero population growth and the life expectancy of your citizens is falling, fast. Probably because your average guy in California has to work two jobs to get enough credits to eat and usually one of those jobs is in a Witiko factory or mine."
Evan jumped, "Don’t even try that, Trevor. These are no slaves here."
Gannon spoke, "Hey, it’s just, we have limited resources so we gotta watch how many babies we’re making."
Malloy assured, "Every one in California has a role to play. There are more humans than Witiko therefore humans make up the bulk of the labor force."
Trevor nodded. "Right. Humans are the peasants while the Witiko and a few select people sit at the top like royalty."
"Don’t preach about royalty," Evan warned. "Not when you’re the undisputed leader of an Empire. California has more democracy than--"
"Democracy? I know how they work. A ruling class. Assemblymen appointed for life. Leaders come only from that pool and the only way to get in is to be selected by the Chancellor or Governor. That’s right, I know about your Cooperative because there are plenty of people living in it who want out. They’ve been talking to us for months."
Evan countered, "There’s always the disgruntled. There are always those who are unhappy. How many people back home would love to see you go?"
Trevor did not take the bait. He kept his attention on the one voice on the other side of the table that mattered; the one voice yet to be heard.
"Here’s the deal," the Emperor found the bottom line and gave it directly to D’Trayne. "I don’t want to fight you. I offer you passage to your home world through the runes. These guys may not know what that means but you do. I have fought and killed thousands of invaders and I am tired of killing. I don’t want my people to die and I don’t want to kill your people. We’ll send you home, safe passage guaranteed."
Malloy, Gannon, and Godfrey all tried to speak. Their words mixed together into an unrecognizable mish-mash.
Chancellor D’Trayne silenced them.
"This is our planet now, too, Trevor Stone."
The alien spoke in a soft voice but his words carried much weight in part because his eyes shined a luminous green. He needed no translation device; he spoke in perfect English, apparently as comfortable with the language as—Trevor understood—all Witiko had become.
"I offer a negotiated peace. I offer to share our technology with you. I offer to merge our great races into one nation and to help you fight off the rest of the invaders. But I will not leave this planet. You will find that my people do not retreat."
Trevor eased in his chair.
"I offer your people a chance to return to their home. You do not belong here. I will not tolerate your presence here."
Evan barked, "It is
not up to you to make the decisions for all humanity."
"You have no authority to attack us," Malloy shot. "We have chosen to ally with the Witiko. Attacking us would be immoral and wrong."
"You would be nothing more than Ghengis Khan or Hitler," Evan suggested in a tempered tone that came across more a warning than an insult. "You don’t want to invade. You wouldn’t be able to live with yourself."
Trevor finished, "There is nothing more to say. I have communicated with you for nearly a year. My message has not changed. We have arrived at a juncture, Chancellor. There will be no more negotiation. You must decide."
The Chancellor stood. Trevor did the same.
"The Witiko do not take well to threats."
Trevor corrected, "You mean The Cooperative, don’t you?"
D’Trayne’s eyes burnt crimson. The alien leader turned to Evan Godfrey.
"You are a wise man, Senator Godfrey. Perhaps you can still salvage this situation before it deteriorates into war."
Trevor said forcefully, "Time is running out Chancellor. I will give you a few days to consider. Your choice is simple; return to the home world from where you came, or die here, on my world in a fight you could have avoided."
The Chancellor suggested grimly, "Perhaps some things are unavoidable."
3. Maneuvers
Gordon Knox walked the first floor of the mansion, his eyes fixed on a paper. A few couriers and assistants shared that hall, each giving the broad-shouldered man a wide berth, no doubt in some small part due to his more intimidating appearance these days; in an effort to go bald on his own terms, Knox had shaved his head last year.
The Director of Intelligence stopped walking as an interesting piece of data grabbed his interest. He traced a line on the sheet with a finger and leaned against an open doorway. A flash in the corner of his eye—movement—diverted his attention.
He stood at the entrance to the "den", a chamber that served as a library, a playroom, and sometimes a classroom. The movement that caught his attention came from the side yard as visible through the den's casement windows.
Gordon crossed the room slow, almost trance-like, and came to the window.
Ashley and her son, Jorge, played in the yard. The sun had baked the muddy lawn hard and a slight hint of green infiltrated the otherwise brown grass. The mother and son kicked a soccer ball between them.
JB—still two months from his eighth birthday—giggled incessantly as his mother tried to steal the white and black ball from between the blond haired boy’s legs. The sound of his playful laughter managed to squeak through the window pane, albeit muffled and dulled.
Gordon watched.
Ashley smiled as she lunged one foot then another at the ball, as if actually trying to steal it away. Gordon knew it a mother's ruse.
Knox grew transfixed by that smile, by those giggles, by Ashley’s lunging at the ball, at JB’s clumsy but successful dodges. He pressed a finger against the glass, as if maybe he could touch the giggles, the fun, and the mother’s love through the window. But he felt only a cold barrier.
He did not dream of winning Ashley’s love. He lacked these designs not merely because of the twelve years separating their ages or his unflinching loyalty to Trevor Stone. No, Ashley lived on another plane. He watched her with the same sense of awe that a young art student might feel strolling The Louvre; studying and watching but knowing his hands could never grasp such splendor.
Ashley showed The Empire her smile when they needed to see the warmth of the mother of the post-Armageddon world. She gracefully walked at Trevor’s side as per the script drawn for her character to play on the public stage. She lent her name and her words to the fight against infant mortality, to gather volunteer work parties to build new schools, to conservation initiatives during times of rationing.
He pulled his finger from the glass. At that moment the ball careened toward the house and smacked into the side of the mansion below the window, drawing both sets of playing eyes to the man watching them.
JB waved enthusiastically. Ashley flashed an unsure smile.
Gordon walked away.
---
Trevor Stone sat at the head of a long table in the mansion's basement. A collection of televisions, audio equipment, and computers surrounded the room in cabinets and on counters.
Two doors led away as did a set of stairs. One of those doors opened to the armory. The second to a small utility room.
Unbeknownst to the council members gathered at the table, that second door led to more than a hot water heater. Trevor’s portal to the strange device that provided him with access to mankind’s genetic memories lay hidden in there while the key that unlocked that door—a key visible only to his eyes—hung on his neck.
Trevor glanced around the table at the assembling military council. They had met on numerous occasions in the three years since Trevor returned from his cross-dimensional excursion yet he still missed Reverend Johnny’s booming voice.
However, Jon Brewer attracted Trevor's full attention as he began the meeting with a disturbing report.
"We found the same thing in Seattle that we found in Grand Forks, Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Cincinnati," Jon licked his lips and fidgeted in his seat. "We found nothing."
"Nothing?" Dante Jones, Director of Internal Security, repeated with a question mark.
Brett Stanton scratched one of the scars on his thin, pot-marked face and asked, "There were supposed to be bad things there. Now wait, this wasn’t a reconnaissance goof, was it?"
Gordon Knox answered definitively, "I had people in there a month before the troops. Seattle was crawling with Deadheads, Mutants, and we even had reports of Wraiths."
Brewer responded, "Well they were gone when we got there. Not a trace. Well, I mean, lots of bodies of people."
"Wait a second," Dante asked. "You found bodies? Human bodies?"
When Jon nodded Dante concluded, "So they were there not long before you guys marched in. They just vanished."
Trevor noticed Anita Nehru sitting at the far end of the table with her head cradled in one hand while vacantly swirling a twizzle stick in a cup of coffee with the other. Her husband, Omar, sat across the table trying to get her attention but failing.
"Trevor?"
"Huh?
Gordon repeated what Trevor missed, "I said, the way the hostiles are disappearing reminds me of how people were disappearing before all this."
Dante agreed, "Yeah, this looks kind of familiar."
"Alllrriiigghtty then, does that mean they're all going to come back, too?" Lori Brewer’s flippant remark raised a scary question.
Brett Stanton leaned forward and scratched his noggin as he laid it out, "Okay, now, well, if we were to go thinking back to all that, when was the last time we know for sure a bunch of people went missing?"
Trevor closed his eyes and revisited those chaotic days some ten years prior. The first signs of impeding Armageddon came in the form of mass disappearances. Those disappearances included Ashley.
Her group had been the first recovered, but not the last. For more than four years the expanding armies of the human Empire happened upon caches of ‘ark riders’, pulling them from gooey green sarcophagi with no recollection of their ordeal. However, no such riders had been found in the three years since ten thousand baseball fans showed up at Wrigley field. That group had disappeared the day before the invasion began in earnest; an invasion triggered by the conception of Trevor's son.
Unfortunately, the baseball fans at Wrigley field completed their journey through time before Trevor’s armies marched into Chicago. Instead of finding people waiting to be liberated from green globs, they found torn and shattered corpses. The ark riders, in that case, had completed their time travel too soon, arriving in the midst of a hostile city where they ended up a food source for a variety of nasty predators.
Trevor spoke, "I think Ashley was the last to disappear and the Wrigley field mess was the last to reappear."
Knox
postulated, "So something stole away people, maybe to try and save them, at the start of all this. Now, here we are and something is stealing away monsters…to save them?"
"Not just any monsters," Trevor said.
Brewer agreed, "You’re right. It’s stuff from Voggoth’s place."
Trevor looked to the far end of the table again. Anita remained silent with one hand stroking her long dark hair and her eyes focused on that cup of coffee. Omar, frustrated at her trance-like demeanor, sat in his chair puffing on a cigarette.
"Anita."
She did not respond. Trevor repeated, "Anita?"
"Huh? What? Oh, sorry."
Trevor took a good look at her face.
Anita and Omar had immigrated from India to the United States long before the end-of-the-world. He spoke in a purposely bad accent and often times appeared more than eager to embrace the stereotype, if it served to his advantage.
Trevor considered Anita to be an amazing woman. The more he learned of her the more intelligent he knew her to be. That’s why he had named her Chief Analyst Hostile Information and Tracking, placing her in charge of the Red Rock research facility. After Reverend Johnny’s death, Anita also took the role of Chief Analyst of Hostile Biotechnology.
While she lacked a hard science background, she could translate scientific data into understandable information. Anita served as the perfect translator between the council and the scientists doing the hands-on research at Red Rock.
Trevor said, "We were discussing the fact that the hostiles disappearing in the major cities all seem to be from Voggoth’s realm. Is that the case?"
She ran a hand through her hair, sighed, and changed her posture from slouching to stiff. Still, the bags under her eyes suggested a severe lack of sleep.
Beyond Armageddon IV: Schism Page 5