Copyright © 2019 PD McClafferty All rights reserved
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: [email protected]
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover artwork by Gary Val Tenuta at www.gvtgraphics.com
Interior art from Shutterstock.
For more works by PD McClafferty, please visit www.pdmcclafferty.com
“Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.”
-Angelina Jolie-
CONTENTS
Chapter 1: END RUN PART 2
Chapter 2: LONGSHOT
Chapter 3: XOLIA
Chapter 4: SEDONA
Chapter 5: LOTHAR
Chapter 6: REMORSE AND RETRIBUTION
Chapter 7: LOTHAR
Chapter 8: DECISIONS
Chapter 9: THE USS MAINE
Chapter 10: THE INTERDICTED WORLDS
Chapter 11: THE INTERDICTED WORLDS PART 2
Chapter 12: END OF THE LINE
Chapter 1
END RUN PART 2
On the ancient holographic recording, the long dead general paused to rub his eyes. He looked more than tired. “While the world watched the useless activity on the moon,” his voice grated out, “space agencies around the world sent probes out into the galaxy to find suitable new homes for the best and brightest of the Earth.” The general’s bloodshot eyes stared at him, and Gareth heard Chiu gasp. “There was never enough mass in the moon to shield Terra, or Eldenworld as they are now calling it, from the effects of the supernova. Not by several factors. The engineers who designed it knew it. The leaders of the political groups knew it and the heads of the various militaries knew it. The dust and debris will help to shield the Earth, of course, and now perhaps a few plants or fish will survive in the deepest parts of the ocean, and a few more in deep places like The Yeugate or Jafelon… but no more. Unfortunately, half way through planting the explosives, the opposition found out.” General Das leaned forward and spoke intently into the screen. “We only finished setting the last of the explosives a month ago, and the Armageddon Device was activated only yesterday. The only hope you have is that when you eventually blow up the moon, sometime in my distant future, someone out there will notice it and come to your assistance. The best brains, and the most intelligent people on the planet have already been evacuated to other worlds. The Gate Stations have been turned off and powered down and all orbital vehicles removed, so that the more,” he looked embarrassed for a moment, “undesirable elements of the population won’t flood the galaxy. The worldwide broadcast power grid is now inoperative, and the last four starships are due to depart within the hour. I know that I will die here; I’ve known it all along.” He chuckled without mirth. “I should have taken a gate to a Decade World with my family when I had the chance, but the power is down now and the crazies control the surface.” His smile was grim. “I don’t really want to end my life by being eaten.”
“Oh no!” Chiu murmured at his side. “It’s all been for nothing.” She began to weep, tears squeezing out from beneath her tightly shut eyes.
“The opposition wants to use the explosives that are planted on the moon to blow open The Yeugate, and take control of what’s left of the world. My job is to see that they don’t.” The general leaned closer yet. “You have a million in one chance of survival if you blow up the moon. You have zero chances if you don’t. All I can do is to wish you the best of luck.” Faintly Gareth could hear weapons fire in the background of the recording. “The opposition have more men and are better armed than my forces. I apologize for deceiving you but I had no choice, and I regret what I now have to do to my own men.” His arm reached forward, and the image disappeared.
~~~
Gareth stared out of the transparent wall of their room, and over the blood-red mountains in the distance. After standing that way for ten minutes, he took a deep breath and, ignoring his crying wife for the moment, glared up at the ceiling. Did you know about this? He shot the thought to Athena, who he knew watched his movements carefully.
No! The stunned though came back from the entity that had brought him into this whole mess in the first place. I wouldn’t do something like that to you. She paused for several long moments. What do we do now? For the first time since he’d met her, Athena sounded shocked and uncertain. All he felt was anger.
What do YOU do, you mean? He replied with a mental snarl. I have fulfilled what you asked me to do. I quit.
But…
No buts, Athena. You will send Chiu and me back to twenty first century Earth, at the same time I left. Thank you for the repairs you did to me, but I think I’ve paid for those a long while back. He stood up from the bed and reached a hand down to Chiu, who looked up at him with red eyes. “Dry your eyes, love. We’re leaving.”
He saw her swallow. “Where are we going?” She asked as she took his hand.
“You mentioned that you wanted to come with me should I ever quit and go home. Today is that day. We are going back to my Earth, in my time, to live long and happy lives.” His voice was grim as be bent to pick up the weapons and EVA suit belts, stuffing them all into his old and rather battered rucksack. “You can send us back any time you like, Athena. I’m more than ready to put this place behind me.”
“Gareth…” Chiu began, but the crunch of sand under their feet interrupted whatever she was about to say. The waves looked silver in the moonlight, and Gareth guessed the time at just after midnight. The Mexican air was warm and soft, and smelled of the sea. He shut his eyes for a moment and smiled with pure enjoyment. It was good to be home.
“What will we do?” Chiu’s voice was nervous.
Gareth turned to her. “My car is right over there.” He said, pointing to a berm at the top of the moonlit beach. “We will go back to the United States, find a new place to live, and make arrangements to sell the Colt and the ray gun I picked up on the moon, along with the EVA suits. That should set us up in style for the rest of our natural lives.” He led her up the beach. “But first I want to stop and get a hamburger. I haven’t had a burger in years, and there are three twenty-four hour McDonald’s in Ensenada.” His voice held a note of reverence. “I have some American and Mexican money stashed in the car.”
Chapter 2
LONGSHOT
“This is food?” Chiu asked, chewing hesitantly on her burger. “It tastes like leather.”
“It’s all a matter of what you are used to.” Gareth replied, mumbling slightly around his mouthful of sandwich. “I grew up on this stuff.”
Chiu set her burger down and began to disassemble it in her plate. “No wonder Athena had to rebuild you.”
“Be nice.” He replied, chuckling as he unwrapped his third burger. Taking a big bite, he stared through the windows of the fast food restaurant, and out into the night sky. Somewhere a dog barked while the navigation lights of an airliner winked in the distant sky. “Let’s look at what we have left to work with.” He muttered to himself, chewing meditatively. Chiu looked up sharply, her blue eyes widening, but said nothing as she popped a pickle into her mouth. “That General Das said something…” He rubbed his chin, thinking, and then it came to him. “He said something about gateways and the Decade Worlds. I wonder…”
“I know a little about the Decade Worlds,” a soft voice interrupted his musing, “but the source for info
rmation is Thomas, in Shsa-Tirion. He was the one who ran the space program.” Athena slid in beside Chiu, giving the stunned woman a quick wink. Instead of a Roman gown, this time she was wearing worn, snug-fitting jeans, a red flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows, and had her hair tied back in a ponytail with a simple blue ribbon. Despite the folksy clothes, she still looked every inch a beautiful and desirable woman. Gareth had to remind himself that she wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, remotely human.
“Does that mean I have to go to Shsa-Tirion myself?” Gareth asked, his eyes still unfocused and his mind a million miles away. He never seemed to notice that he was speaking to Athena.
“Gareth, you’re a primitive.” She replied in a laughing voice. “Just speak normally and we can have a three-way conversation. Four way,” she amended, glancing at Chiu. “Thomas is listening.” Gareth shuddered at the utter impossibility of what she asked so casually.
“Hello Thomas. What can you tell me of the Decade Worlds?” Gareth asked, suppressing a sigh.
“Hello Gareth.” A soft baritone said out of the air. “The Decade Worlds were the first worlds opened up to teleportation gate transportation. Probes were sent out to ten worlds and when they landed, they set up a Gate Station. Gate transport, as you know, has to have a gateway at both ends, and it takes an incredible amount of power. Hence, we had to send along our own power source. Unfortunately, over time, and thanks to selective purging, much information on the Decade worlds was lost. All that I retain of the original files is the rough descriptions of the ten Decade Worlds, like something you might pick up at a travel agency. Ell, I believe, has a list of the locations, in spatial coordinates, for the gate transfers, but no information on the destination of each particular jump coordinate. After this many millennium, a transfer gate location could be underwater, or even in space.”
Gareth popped the last of his burger in his mouth, still staring out the window, and let out a dry snicker. “I would hate to come out in the middle of a mountain, or a tree. It would probably make a very big bang.”
“It would indeed.” Thomas injected. “However, there are safeguards built into the gates to prevent this very thing from happening. From what I understand you can still come out underwater or in space, although that last is unlikely unless the gate were actually set up in space.”
“What are you planning on doing, Ernst Gareth Köhler?” There was more than a hint of steel in Chiu’s question.
Yes, what ARE you planning on doing, Gareth? Athena’s voice echoed in his mind.
Gareth sipped noisily at his milkshake, and reached for the last burger that sat on the table before him. Raising his eyes, he gave the women sitting across from him a sly smile. “It was that damned General Das that put the idea in my mind. I had no idea that the gateways were actually teleportation devices. I had no idea what they were. What am I planning you ask? I plan to take a little trip.” His smile widened. “When we get back.” Chiu’s face hardened, and the air about the table seemed to drop several degrees. “But not for a while.” He amended quickly to his scowling wife. “First we need to take a bath and then go for a swim.”
“You never planned to quit in the first place!” Athena fumed, her violet eyes snapping.
Gareth grinned as he finished his last burger. “I did at first, to be honest. What I really needed to know was that I could quit, and then find a quiet place I could think and put the pieces together. McDonald’s has always worked for me.” Athena’s face was slowly turning red, and his smile widened even more. “Care to go for a swim with us?” He asked in a nonchalant voice.
Athena sputtered for a moment, and then began to laugh. “Gareth, you are terrible.” Her violet eyes pierced him. “I would love to go for a swim.”
Gareth patted his stomach, sighed in contentment, and stood. “In that case you can probably send us back to our room at The Yeugate. We’ll take a quick shower to clean up, and meet you at the pool. Bring your swimsuit.”
It was Athena’s turn to give him a wide smile. “I’ll meet you at the pool and by the way, I have never in all my life worn a swimsuit, and I don’t plan to start now.” Gareth’s jaw dropped open at the implication. Athena laughed and vanished.
The water in the massive pool was pleasingly warm, and unfortunately crystal clear. Since Athena chose to skinny dip, Gareth and Chiu were forced to follow suit and despite his reservations about what Athena really was, Gareth had to admit that she appeared to be very obviously human and mammalian. Sans clothing, she was heart-stoppingly gorgeous. The glares that Chiu threw at both of them showed that his wife shared his sentiments. Athena just smiled, and swam like a cream-colored otter, sliding through the water with barely a ripple.
Later, as the three sat beside the pool, wrapped in thick white robes and staring at the bloody red sun as it set over the distant mountains, Gareth spoke to the air. “Ell, how many Gate Stations are operational at this moment?”
“There are currently two operational Gate Stations, Gareth. One here at The Yeugate, and another just activated at Shsa-Tirion. The Jafelon Gate may still be operational, but inside the flooded city of Jafelon it is inaccessible. The status of the Brivrelsea Gate is unknown, although the AI there is attempting to reactivate it.”
“Is the gate here very far?” Gareth asked, the beginnings of a plan percolating through his brain.
“If you would walk to the window, you can see it quite clearly.” Ell replied.
Gareth blinked as they approached the clear side of the dome. “That looks like a smaller version of the Saint Louis Arch.” He said, frowning at the shining steel gateway. “And not too much smaller.”
“The gate was designed to accept a small spacecraft.” Ell stated by way of explanation. “The shuttle you saw in the Transit Terminal would fit easily, as well as the small corvette that is still mothballed in the museum. Larger vessels will take months to reach the nearer of the Decade Worlds.”
“Just how many vessels are stored in this museum of yours?” He asked curiously, thinking of the U.S. Navy mothball fleet in Suisun Bay, California.
“Ten.” Ell responded. “Three more shuttles like yours, one corvette, a Momar class destroyer, a science vessel, a frigate and two transports.” El answered the next question before he could ask it. “They are stored in a five-kilometer wide bubble, anchored at the Lagrangian point. The military generals and admirals created the museum as an approved storage facility for a small amount of military hardware at the end of the Ecothiax War. The then popular Peace-First Party had all the rest of the military hardware towed out to the asteroid belt and destroyed, and three quarters of the military personnel summarily dismissed.”
“It figures.” He spat. “After thirty-eight thousand years governments are still treating their soldiers like shit. I’d like to take a closer look at the gateway, if I could.” Gareth murmured; his nose almost pressed against the glass.
“Now?” Ell sounded surprised.
“Tomorrow noonish would be fine.” Gareth replied, giving Chiu a sly wink before he looked up at the ceiling.
“I’ll send a transport to your room at the time you requested.” Ell stated in a no-nonsense voice.
“Thank you.” Turning to face Chiu, he murmured, “You go back to the room. I need to sit and think for a while,” he explained, nodding to a lounger set beside the clear wall.
Athena gave them a warm smile. “I’ll be going also. The swim was refreshing. Thank you for inviting me.” Her eyes sparkled. “We’ll have to do it again.”
Gareth swallowed, and could feel his cheeks redden. “That would be nice.” Athena gave him a wink and disappeared.
“Who was that you were speaking to?” Ell asked from the air. “Although she appears to be human to optical sensors, my more delicate instruments classify her a noncorporeal, multi-dimensional being.”
“Her name is Athena.” Gareth filled in helpfully. “You may have heard of her.”
“I have indeed.” Ell replied. “I asked
because my instruments indicate that there have been changes made in your own molecular structure when compared with what is considered human normal. Analysis here at The Yeugate indicates an eventual realignment to something similar to Athena.”
Gareth gritted his teeth. “I should have expected it. Athena replaced my leg and my eye, repaired other external damage and made some internal adjustments, I suspect, to my DNA.” Chiu was staring at him wide eyed. “If I frighten you, your parents aren’t very far away. I would release you from your commitment to me.” His voice was somber, and Chiu paled.
“That may not be necessary.” Ell injected quickly. “Sensors indicate a similar molecular realignment in Mrs. Köhler as well, if not to the degree or extent as in you, Gareth.”
Chiu’s face had gone hard. “Wait until I get my hands on her, that meddling bi…”
“Before you fly off the handle,” Gareth injected quickly, “ask yourself this: has anything done to us by Athena hurt us in any way? We have a neat tattoo of a dragon on our arms, and we’re as healthy as horses. We have abilities denied to most others. What do you have to complain about—really?”
Chiu looked like she’d bitten into a persimmon. “She didn’t ask me.” She replied through gritted teeth.
“I doubt if she had the time to ask, Chiu.” Gareth gave her a flat look. “Suck it up, as they say, and deal with it.” He thought she was going to hit him for a moment, and then Chiu seemed to deflate.
“Unfortunately, you’re right.” She said, looking at the floor.
Very good. Athena whispered in the back of Gareth’s mind.
Oh, just shut up. He replied with a snippy thought. Somewhere Athena laughed.
~~~
The distant mountains were fading from a deep watermelon color to black, while overhead the brighter stars were beginning to twinkle. Gareth’s grin was lopsided as he sat with his fingers laced behind his head, looking up. He should have recognized the familiar constellations long before he found the Ford engine block on his first journey across the Shattered Plains. Almost involuntarily, his mind rewound to the series of incidents that led him to Eldenworld, and the impossible situation he now found himself in.
The Decade Worlds Page 1