Wolves of the Tesseract Collection

by Christopher D Schmitz

  “Thank you,” Claire whispered before giving him a peck on the cheek and departing.

  Jackie looked down at her smaller neighbor who watched her, enamored. She’d gotten accustomed to her novelty that came with a foreign heritage, even though she couldn’t see any difference.

  The girl was still staring at her. “Um, hello.”

  “I’m Gita,” she whispered enthusiastically. “Can I touch your skin? You smell good. Does everyone from Earth smell like that?”

  “Only fellow Cinnabon junkies,” she responded sardonically.

  “I don’t know what either of those is. Can you make me a junkie?”

  “Deal.” Jackie shook Gita’s hand.

  Zabe rolled his eyes and Wulftone merely grinned.

  ***

  Victor Adams shifted in the uncomfortable, sticky heat. Tourists used to visit the area, but they’d stopped going to the northern Panamanian region ever since Chiriquí declared independence. Economic instability and violence made it uncharacteristically hostile for foreigners. That fact made the hospitality eager to serve and earn a piece of the shrinking, foreign supply of tourism income.

  The Persian mobster didn’t care for the humidity; it made his prosthetic chafe and stick. He rubbed under the itchy hook where his ring-studded hand used to be and stared across the table.

  A copy of the New York Times he’d brought lay on the table. Caivev’s likeness, barely discernable in the edge of the photo, had been captured on camera as she watched over the larger than life leader of this third world country. Chiriquí had finally begun to stabilize under the charismatic rebel leader General Nyagittari’s leadership.

  Bringing over a tray of drinks and a hookah a low-caste and obsequious vyrm named Theera left the glassware on the table. Those at the table barely made eye contact with him; they were each familiar enough with the Black to understand that Theera was a scut—a servile vyrm and barely a person as far as their culture was concerned.

  Bruce Cannon and Jacob Sisyphus sat on either side of the bronze-skinned Persian in the dim lounge and faced Caivev. Sisyphus shifted uncomfortably within his overly-starched shirt that struggled to absorb his sweat and bunched up at his massive shoulders. He’d bulked back up to his pro-wrestling size in the months since the Nebraska incident. Perhaps he’d even surpassed his former glory.

  Caivev could feel the changed attitudes in what remained of the Seven. They’d finally been blooded by real, cosmic conflict and became more dangerous now than they ever were even under the guidance of the powerful Nitthogr.

  “Where is the fourth?” she asked. None had escaped the failed Awakening unscathed and not all injuries were physical. She looked back to the door where one of her trusted vyrm generals, Charobv, stood guard.

  Charobv shook his head to indicate no others would come.

  Adams pulled the hookah closer with his hook and took a deep draw on the pipe. “Thornton’s become something of a recluse since his recovery—if you can call it that. He would not answer the call.”

  Cannon nodded measuredly. “I’ve heard he hasn’t left his estate and will not see anyone.”

  Caivev grimaced as she regarded the wealthy museum mogul. Bruce Cannon seemed somehow different, though each of the survivors had been changed. She assumed they each resented her for abandoning them before the Awakening, but she wasn’t surprised that they answered her call. Men like this craved power, and she could offer it to them.

  “What is the state of the Heptobscurantum?”

  The men traded reluctant glances around the table. It was a sore spot for them.

  “We are rebuilding,” Adams said through his thick accent. “But it will take time. Most of our remnant is from the lower ranking proletariat who were not ready for an invitation to the Awakening. The battle in Mullen wiped out most of our high ranking members. It will take a couple years to rebuild—but we will overcome.”

  Sisyphus scowled at Caivev. “Why should we even consult with this outsider? She is allied with the Black—and it was vyrm of the Black that tore through our forces and prevented the Awakening of Sh’logath. If not for them, we may have succeeded.”

  She accepted his criticism and nodded. “I suspected a backup plan would be prudent… and those vyrm in question acted on the orders of a traitor. They died faithful to the cause—they just didn’t know of the sorcerer’s betrayal. Besides, how would the outcome have been different if I had been there instead of here?” She stabbed her finger down onto the newspaper and pointed to Nyagittari. “This is what I’ve been doing.”

  “Stabilizing war-torn tropical countries is a poor excuse,” Sisyphus scoffed.

  “It’s not the politics I’m after,” she hissed. “It’s access to certain resources of unimaginable power.” She glared across the table and her eyes flashed with zealous flame. “The Awakening ritual is not the only way to summon Sh’logath.”

  The three men leaned across the table inquisitively.

  “There is an ancient, cosmic gate built eons before Nitthogr and Basilisk were ever born. It can open the way to Nihil and invite the Devourer in… and we don’t need the blood of Claire Jones to activate it. It’s not even within the realms of the multiverse. It will only be a matter of time before I can access it.”

  Sisyphus blinked wistfully. He and his companions hung on every word. Caivev knew she had them exactly where she wanted them.

  “It is true that de facto leadership of the Black has fallen to me since Nebraska. I only want to know,” she asked seductively, “when I call, will the Heptobscurantum answer and come to my aid in service of the Great Devourer?”

  “We’ll be ready,” Sisyphus murmured and slid a paper across the table to her. “Meanwhile, in the interest of a quid pro quo, help me locate something that I desire.”

  ***

  Loud rumbling noises from the industrial generators echoed through the dank hallways of the temple. Cerci Heiderscheidt stepped over a pile of massive cables and power conduits that snaked through the corridors. Doctor Walther had the operation well in hand as he puttered about the nearby chamber where they’d set up their machines deep inside the jungle lab.

  Before she could step out to do some exploring, the contraption they’d assembled split the veil between dimensions with unnerving power. A pained gasp escaped the lips of a kidnapped local woman as the machine bled her energies and life essence as it powered the device. The hostage’s eyes traced the blood-darkened intravenous lines that attached her to the apparatus.

  Cerci spared a glance backward to watch as the triangular door widened and opened a portal into a different location. She grinned as a trio of Caivev’s masked vyrm leapt through the breach and into the bank vault in a different hemisphere and began pitching gold bricks back through the portal.

  She wouldn’t be needed until later. The scientist walked the dimly lit halls of what the vyrm had called the Lost Temple. In her spare time, she'd begun recording and unraveling some of the ancient hieroglyphics with the help of some old lexicons Skrom had supplied her with. The huge tarkhūn wasn’t smart, but he sometimes proved handy.

  Veering a direction she hadn’t gone before, Cerci explored a winding stair that emptied into a massive, pillared room. At the far end, an immense set of double doors stretched from floor to ceiling leaving only enough gap for a plaque that she paused to translate as “to Koth.” She assumed Koth was a name. She touched the doors with her hand and shuddered with excitement—some new mystery to solve. The alien metal felt cold to the touch, even in the wretched, persistent heat of the tropical environment.

  Turning to head back, Cerci took a round-a-bout way and walked through a passage until she came to the central narthex she’d passed through earlier without a second thought. This time, a faint song caught her ear and she tilted her head to listen. Following the sound, she stalked through the anteroom until she came to a locked door at one side.

  She leaned her ear up against an old door and lis
tened. A haunted sounding baritone floated through the barrier singing in a foreign tongue. The voice was beautiful and decidedly male, though young.

  A thump on the door startled her as if the owner of the voice had leaned against the locked entry. "Is someone there?" she asked. "What's your name?"

  “My name is Zurrah,” he replied. “They will come for me.”

  Chapter 2

  Wulftone handed Zabe an envelope sealed with the wax stamp of Shjikara, the high cleric of the Veritas. Zabe broke the seal, scanned the document and dropped the form in his trash bin with a scowl.

  “Good news?” Wulftone asked sarcastically as he raised his eyebrows.

  Zabe grimaced. “The Veritas must’ve gotten wind that we were recruiting again. They want to know if we will recommend soldiers for service.” He stood in a huff; Zabe and the few remaining officers had been on their way to an observation where they planned to grade their students, in fact, and select the elite or especially skilled to invite into the Guardian Corps. “We’ll barely have enough troops to adequately guard the dimensional gates and Royal City the way it is. Now, this guy wants his cut?”

  Wulftone followed Zabe as he strolled towards the training grounds to watch the exercises. “They did save our family’s bacon during Nitthogr’s invasion,” he reminded him.

  “If you can call it that,” Zabe sighed. “They let Shardai and a few resistance members hide out in the catacombs. I understand they are a reclusive sect from the old ways of the Guardian Corps, but anyone who won’t fight in such a conflict isn’t truly worthy of that name.”

  Shrugging, Wulftone noted, “Maybe that’s why they go by the name Veritas, instead.”

  Zabe frowned at his cousin’s attempt to play devil’s advocate. “If they’re only meant to be priests, why carry any weapons at all, or form their brotherhood out of the warrior class?”

  Wulftone shrugged. He knew it was more than political resentment that bothered his cousin—the war cost Zabe his father. Zahaben died when the sorcerer stormed the castle. If the Veritas had come down from the mountainside abbey and fought, Zahaben might still be alive… and Bithia, too.

  “Will Claire join us to watch the exercise and watch Jackie in action for the first time?”

  Zabe frowned. He’d seen far too little of her since returning to the Prime. “She is busy with Pollando of the other clerics. Claire may have Bithia’s memories and the important parts of her mind, but they are still tutoring her with a crash course in royal diplomacy and Prime theology.”

  The men arrived at the edge of the training fields: a large garden maze hundreds of meters across and set up with a number of traps, obstacles, and barriers. “Remember this?” Wulftone smiled at his cousin as they ascended the observation tower. They’d gone through training together in fact and the maze was something of a rite of passage. Before Nitthogr it wasn’t uncommon for the children of corpsmen to receive waivers and go through the maze trials as teenagers.

  “My father was so excited to watch me and…” Zabe trailed off. He never talked about his brother. He’d closed off that part of him. “He was so proud when my team took the flag for the win.”

  Wulftone smiled warmly—he’d been on that team. Together they stared at the center of the maze and spotted the prized object guarded by a gauntlet of obstacles. “Just like old times.”

  ***

  Harken stood in the preparations area and addressed the gathered trainees. His unamplified voice boomed across the deck where the recruits stood at attention.

  “Remember that today counts. This is the day you’ve been waiting for—and I haven’t invested these last several months’ worth of intense training into you for nothing! You will be graded on your performance in these trials, like usual, but there will be more eyes on you.

  “General Zabe and Lieutenant General Wulftone will be watching to see whom they might extend an offer of Guardian Corps armor sets to. Remember, the GC are specialists, elite, but they don’t always make selections based on cumulative skill—so don’t worry if you wind up staying in my ranks at the Royal Military. I trained you. I know what you can each do and I’ll be glad to retain you.”

  He stood straight and tall then gave his class of recruits a salute. They returned the gesture and broke into their four assigned factions.

  “Everyone perform weapons checks and get to your assigned positions,” Harken ordered.

  Hands clattered against weapons as the troops double checked and verified that their weapons had been set to stun, rather than the default kill setting.

  "The games begin in fifteen minutes—you all know the drill! Live fire with stun blasts." His voice echoed a few decibels above the footsteps as they hurried off towards their starting corners at the edges of the maze while he barked a quick rules primer for the modified capture the flag exercise. “Points awarded for the first team to capture the device inside the gauntlet; points awarded for every enemy you put down; points awarded for every second your team holds the trophy; points awarded at the Generals’ pleasure for feats of bravery or skill—be at your best—and remember that we’re all on the same side at the end of the day.”

  Harken paced the perimeter of the maze and glanced back to where team Beta huddled together, scrambling to form a quick game plan. He smiled and managed to pull his eyes off of Jackie and her friends. Beta team wasn’t the strongest or most talented, but they had the most heart as far as he was concerned, and he was rooting for them.

  ***

  Jackie poked around the hedge corner of the maze and ducked back as the crack of blaster fire tore up her cover. “Gita, you’re up.” She didn’t know how she’d feel about sending in a friend to play bait in a deadly-fire situation, but everyone was set to stun and Jackie was willing to press her luck.

  Jenner nodded to the short girl. “You got this.” They’d worked in a team of three and moved their way through the grounds as they covered each other’s backs.

  Gita steeled herself and tried to shake out the nerves that nearly crippled her. She really hated being shot, but she was the smallest target and so it made sense… she just hoped she could be as small of a target as possible.

  The tiny soldier leapt into the open and rolled into a prone position as she fired. None of her shots went anywhere near the enemy targets, but the move drew out the gunners on the far side of the corridor.

  Jackie and Jenner leaned out and picked off the enemies. Blue energy jolts smacked into their chests and crackled with crippling lightning.

  Jenner charged ahead impetuously and turned a corner deeper into the maze. Jackie rolled her eyes and ran after him. "Hold up," she yelled, trying to catch him. She hadn't figured out just yet if his impulsivity was because of his age and status as the youngest recruit of the batch or if he was just trying to impress Gita.

  They caught up with him just in time to rescue him from an outgunned firefight. His rash actions may have exposed him to gunfire, but it also distracted the enemies who thought they’d caught him alone. Gita and Jackie cut them down and then cleared the way to the central contraption. Their goal lay at the center of the rotating machine of punishment.

  “I can do this,” Jenner said as if he had something to prove. He launched his body towards the moving obstacle course that made up the automated gauntlet. The first few obstacles were only moderately difficult, but they got progressively harder when anyone ventured deeper; knocker bars and swinging weights promised to punish anyone who ventured too far.

  “Ah crap,” Jackie said, realizing that the device her team was after laid in the middle of a four-way intersection at the center of the gauntlet.

  Jenner rushed ahead and got most of the way through before a heavy pylon smashed into him, knocking him back with bone-crunching force. He jumped to his feet and took another blow to his spine from a spinning, weighted pendulum that sent him reeling back towards the pylon which hit him again, this time leveling him.

  “Crap, crap, crap
,” Jackie muttered, raising her weapon and bracing herself against the edge-wall of the maze. She watched Gita sprint towards the pain-laced hall of the gauntlet.

  ***

  Wulftone and Zabe both cringed as Jenner took a beating at the hands of the obstacle-laden machine. Beta team had been the first to locate the pathway in the center where their primary objective lay. Alpha team’s scouts were not far off, however, and they could see them approach from the observation area.

  Harken watched nearby and commented, “I thought it might be either Alpha or Beta team that found the center first.”

  Zabe grunted an acknowledgment.

  Suddenly, the tiniest member of the Beta trio darted forward. She slipped past the first few impediments and then surged forward, headfirst and skidded below the pylons that pummeled Jenner. Her small stature let her slide below the threat range of the smashing arms and the gauntlet’s pendulums and knocker bars—but barely.

  Wulftone arched his brows and turned to Zabe. “Woah. Isn’t that the same move used by your…”

  “Yes,” Zabe stated, stone-faced.

  Wulftone turned back to the action. He knew it couldn’t be easy to watch old memories replayed before him.

  Gita skidded to a stop with barely a centimeter left to skootch until she could grab ahold of the trophy. She shouted triumphantly to her teammates. As soon as she got her hands on it and scored points for her team a scout from Alpha group cleared the mouth of the corridor.

  Jackie braced against the wall to improve her steadiness. She fired two shots; both found their marks at a range well beyond the weapon’s normal accuracy rating. Both Wulftone and Harken beamed with pride at their friend’s success.

  Zabe turned to Harken. “Was that just luck?”

  “I don’t think so. She did mention something about first-person shooter games from Earth."

  A second scout jumped up he fired and tagged Gita who howled with pain. The shot jolted her in the arm, numbing that limb, but she remained conscious.