The fourth empire, p.20
The Fourth Empire, page 20
They reached the other side, and that's when Hunter stopped. He made Joxx stop, too. They were under an overgrown hazel tree. Hunter put his hand to Joxx's mouth just as the SG officer was about to cry out in protest.
The air all around them started to shake. Then the sound from above came again. Very intense, very loud, like two great pieces of steel spinning madly in the wind, which was close to the truth.
Hunter looked south of their position, and there it was: a flying machine that moved by means of two long, steel blades whirling around a very noisy engine. The machine could stop, go left, go right, and move straight ahead. The only thing it couldn't do was move very fast.
Joxx took one look at the flying devil and nearly passed out. The ancientness of the machine alone made it fright-ening. It looked so primitive; how could it possibly fly? How could it stay airborne? It seemed impossible to tell.
Hunter held Joxx in place, his hand firmly pressed against his mouth. Once again, the SG officer slowly got the message. He froze as the strange aerial machine went right over their heads. It was dark green in color, almost an attempt to blend in with the overabundance of emerald everywhere in this strange place. There was a symbol adhered to the narrow part of its aft fuselage. It was a solid red circle with a smaller blue circle in its center. The same emblem as seen on the Saracens.
"It almost spotted me the last half dozen times," Hunter told Joxx as the craft slowly moved away. "And I believe somehow it can hear people moving on the ground."
"I'd wager they would have cut you up in those rotating blades, if they had caught you," Joxx said. "It's an execution style that has a certain ring to it."
They moved on.
Five more minutes of zigzagging through the very thick forest ensued. The iodine smell became more intense with each step; now the wind didn't have to blow in any certain direction for them to smell it. The noise from the woods in front of them rose up again as well. The high pitched whine, the crackling sounds, interspersed now with the shouts of men in accents so thick, Hunter always had trouble understanding them.
They crossed another standing bog. This one was shallow and the water not quite as murky. Beyond was a relatively clear patch of ground with an even thicker forest behind. It was here that the noise and the smell was coming from.
Hunter stopped their march once again.
"In a moment, two guys are going to come out of that hedge," he told Joxx. "They are not enemies, though they might seem it. Just keep your mouth shut and go with it."
Joxx took a moment to catch his breath and gather himself. He looked strange because he had lost his cap somehow, and his hair was actually tousled and unkempt. He was close to being worn out already.
"At least tell me what planet this is," he whined. "What country? You owe me that, maccus."
Hunter replied, "Not a chance. It took me a long time to get to the heart of this matter and boil it all down to this. You have no choice but to take my word for it. It will all unfold for you slowly, just so you won't have any excuses of not keeping up."
Joxx took a long look around.
"This is a land of rivers and forests and mountains and bogs. It appears to be ancient Earth."
Hunter didn't confirm or deny the guess. He changed the subject.
"Get ready for our friends," he said. "And don't give them any back talk. They are in a highly stressful situation here, and in their own slang, they've got itchy trigger fingers."
He was staring intently into the high grass before them. As always, two men suddenly appeared out of the hedge, assault rifles up and ready.
They were dressed just as Hunter and Joxx: baggy pants, old jackets, and dirty boots. One was wearing a tie and vest. The deep lines in their ruddy faces spoke volumes; they'd grown old before their time. Their eyes were steely and cold. Neither one was smiling.
They took one look at Hunter and groaned. "Oh God," one said. "It's not you again, is it?"
"We stopped the Fifth Paras down on Boxley Road," Hunter told them, knowing from experience that this was the best thing to say at this particular moment.
"The Paras? But they are special operations troops—"
"I know, they fought like them," Hunter replied.
"So where are the others then?"
A short silence. Hunter planned it for exactly five seconds.
"We are the only ones who made it," he finally replied.
As always, the news hit the two men hard.
"All of the lads? Gone?" the second man asked.
Hunter nodded; Joxx did, too.
"Paddy? And Paddy? And Big Mike, Mike, and Mac?"
Again, Hunter nodded gravely. It sometimes got a bit sticky at this point. "And Little Mike, Dirty Mike, Dennis, and the other Paddy as well," he said. "But they all died well and took out a bunch of Paras, too."
The two men stood frozen for a long moment. In some of his early mind trips, the two men would turn on Hunter at this moment, claiming that he might be a Provo spy or worse. No one ever trusted the only survivor of a suicide mission. But whether it was repeated use of the mind ring or some other factor, in his later trips, the two men accepted his story and treated him as one of their own.
They looked at the small cache of weapons and both men finally lowered their rifles.
"Those weapons will be needed," one said. "Get them back into the hollow—and don't ever be telling anyone what you're about to see back there."
Hunter and Joxx picked up the rifles and wordlessly moved on.
They walked through the high grass for what seemed like a very long time. Every once in a while, they would come upon another flat-cap fighter, standing ramrod straight in the tall weeds, allowing them to pass with little more than a grunt.
They finally reached the edge of the grass to come upon yet another thicket of woods. The stink of iodine was stronger than ever.
They moved forward, passing more unsmiling guards, before coming up to a battered van that someone had somehow driven into the deep woods. This place, Hunter would learn, was called Kelly's Hollow.
Gathered around the van was a small clutch of what Hunter would accurately describe as lieutenants. There were five of them; they were dressed like everyone else. The back of the van was stuffed with many strange and exotic items.
"How can this be?" he asked Hunter in an astonished whisper. "Such inventions weren't around in the twenty-first century—"
Hunter gave him a sharp elbow to the ribs, nearly knocking him off his feet. It was a painful signal to shut up.
The lieutenants weren't paying them any attention, though. They were in obvious disarray and very anxious. Their little band was suddenly leaderless—Hunter knew this from before. And they'd just had a massive assault on their senses as well.
As a result, they were arguing among themselves.
"I'm telling you ... that the thing didn't fly away. It just disappeared. Vanished. And left the glow behind..."
"My guys said they saw it fly away."
"They watched it come in.... They followed it here. They were here when it came down. When it all happened ..."
The fourth man exploded on cue. "What the fook difference does it make?" he bellowed. "Whether it vanished or flew away, what's been done here has been done. The brothers are dead. And they stirred up a lot of commotion before they went. Now we have the choppers out looking for us, and with this commotion, the whole magee will be compromised."
"I think we should tell the blokes what happened here," the first man said nervously. "This thing is bigger than the troubles we have with them...."
The four others turned on him. "Are you gone daft finally?" one shouted in his ear. "Bringing the blokes in—to this? What do you think, they'll just pat us on the head and say, 'Interesting piece of science here, boys?' "
This man then turned back to the others. "Now, let's forget about how the thing got away, ok? We must think about what to do with the present."
At this point, Hunter and Joxx entered the scene. The lieutenants looked up at them, happy to see the weapons they were carrying yet instinctively knowing that the ambush, now a mere afterthought, had been costly.
"They are all gone," Hunter said, again knowing from the past that this was the quickest and best thing to do.
"Took nearly three dozen Paras with them," Joxx added without prompting.
The lieutenants let the bad news sink in. Then one said, "Poor souls. But they bought us a few minutes. That chopper is out there again, though, and it's just a matter of time before they come upon all this.... We have to get a move on."
"We have't'get rid of the bodies first," another said, nodding toward the deepest part of the hollow. The other four men agreed.
They turned back to Hunter and Joxx and said, "Give us a hand down here lads, will you?"
Hunter and Joxx dropped the weapons and followed the men down into the hollow. It was almost dark as night down here now, there was that much overgrowth above. A small stream ran through the center of this place—or one once did. There was now a large but shallow crater smack in the middle of this brook; it was from here that the bright light had been shining. Any water still remaining was rising out of the hollow in the form of steam.
The ground around the depression formed what looked to be an almost perfect circle, maybe twenty to thirty feet across. Some of the trees to the north of this position were shorn off at the tops. Something had obviously come out of the sky and landed—or crashed—onto this spot.
About one hundred feet farther down the stream from all this, three bodies were lying in the mud, each one about fifty feet from the other. They were dressed as they all were, except they were also wearing black ski masks with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth. There didn't seem to be any wounds on these bodies. No indications how they had died. Behind them was a tiny thatched cottage hidden so deep in the overgrowth it was impossible to see from the air.
They all walked alongside the suddenly dry streambed and up to the bodies.
"We're throwing the brothers into the bog," one of the lieutenants told Hunter and Joxx. "Though I can't believe those words are coming out of me mouth. But we can't take them with us; if we get stopped with them, it will be curtains for us. And we don't have time to bury them, either. Besides, the Paras will have the sniffing dogs out for us at any minute, and they'll surely smell them if we put them in the ground. So it will have to be the bog for them...."
Joxx began to protest, but again, Hunter gave him a shot in the ribs. "We do what they say or, believe me, they'll throw us in with them."
Joxx was horrified. He was as superstitious as the next Special, and touching a dead body was considered the ultimate in taboo. Ironically, Hunter understood his dilemma.
"Don't wet your pants," he told Joxx sternly. "These guys might not be dead—not really, anyway."
This only horrified Joxx further. They certainly looked dead.
Hunter pushed him toward the first body. He looked about forty years old, and he was stocky. He was lying facedown, his mask still covering most of his features, his cap floating in the mud nearby.
Hunter grabbed him by the shoulders. Joxx reluctantly took the legs. They started walking farther down the barren stream. A large clearing was ahead, made up of a very dark, very deep bog.
They carried the rigid figure up the embankment and out onto the edge of this gloomy, green swamp. A nasty looking mist was rising above this place. The odor seemed to indicate this was not the first time it had been used for human disposal. With a great heave, they threw the man into the deepest part of the dirty water.
They returned to the stream. The lieutenants were standing nearby, anxiously smoking cigarettes. Their van was packed up tight and ready to go. They were just waiting for Hunter and Joxx to fulfill their grisly task.
They picked up the second body and began walking again. This one's face was still covered by his mask as well, but there was something about him that made him seem younger and somewhat innocent. He was also much lighter than the first body.
He made less of a splash when they threw him into the bog.
They returned for the third man, but Hunter knew they would not get very far. They reentered the hollow to find the lieutenants were clustered around the remaining body. They were excited and extremely animated.
Hunter and Joxx quietly approached the scene. It was coming to an end, and Hunter didn't want anything unexpected to happen now.
"He's alive! I tell you, I can see him blink," one of the lieutenants was saying, bending down over the third body. "He can hear me, can't you, Jimmy boy?"
"Blink Jimmy!" another of the lieutenants was yelling. "Blink yer eyes if ye can hear us!"
Hunter and Joxx arrived just as the man lying in the mud began blinking his eyes madly. His mask gone, his face was painfully stretching into a smile, too. Despite his grave condition, he almost seemed happy.
Suddenly, in the background, came the twin growls of more Saracens and the flying, whirling thing.
"Let's get him out of here!" one of the lieutenants said. "Before those bloke bastards trip over themselves and crash down upon us as well!"
Without ever acknowledging Hunter and Joxx again, the men picked up the wounded but smiling man and squeezed him into the back of the van. Then they climbed in themselves and roared away through the deep forest, literally leaving Hunter and Joxx in the dust.
Joxx looked over at Hunter, dumbfounded.
Hunter just shook his head.
"It gets weirder," he said.
Flash!
Everything was green again.
The walls, the bed, the bed covers, the rug, the floor beneath the rug. And everywhere the same shadowy if beatific image of a figure with long hair and wings sprouting from the back, arms spread wide as a gesture of friendship and warmth. Pictures on the wall. Carvings on the wooden door frame. Even the designs printed onto the sheets, this same picture of the faceless, mysterious angel.
The sun was streaming through the emerald curtains blowing lazily in the morning breeze. The light itself seemed to have a greenish tint to it. Hunter was sitting in the ornate chair in the corner of the room, his fists balled, his face anxious. He was waiting for the next step to begin. It was always slow at this point, and it was always hot in the small room. Hunter knew it hadn't rained on this part of the Earth in many, many years.
Joxx was hanging out the window, half covered by the green curtains, looking down on the grand square below. There was a vast plaza ten stories down. Many people were moving through it, many wearing religious clothing.
"Cassocks and such?" Joxx was complaining. "Where are we now? In some bad dream conjured up by your little friend, the priest?"
Hunter didn't reply. This place had once been called Peter's Grand Square or something along those lines, and the city that surrounded it was once a small country in itself. But this formerly tiny kingdom now took up more than half of what was once called Europe.
"At least it is not as wet and cold as the first place you brought me." Joxx sighed, still hanging out the window, talking more to himself than Hunter. It was a habit of his. "It's pleasantly temperate here...."
Hunter wished, as he always did at this point in the mind ring trip, that the bottle of wine sitting on the table next to his bed was filled with slow-ship instead of the vile red stuff that passed as vino in this place, in this time.
"I do say that it makes me uncomfortable to see so many people in habits and collars, though," Joxx went on. "And this damn angel everywhere you turn. Religion is something that's always made me very nervous—more so here, whereever the hell we are."
Again, Hunter remained silent. Joxx's senses were about to get a jolt—and much more than the discovery that they were now about a thousand years ahead of their last scenario.
"Yes, too many cassocks," Joxx said, still gawking out the window. "Too much religion will drive you crazy, guaranteed."
Finally, he pulled himself back in, only to discover that Hunter was now wearing a floor-length black cassock. Even worse, he was wearing one, too.
Joxx began to protest of course, but before the words could get out of his mouth, there came a soft knocking at the door, just as Hunter knew it would.
"Your transport is waiting," came the lilting voice from the other side. Hunter jumped to his feet and opened the door; it was the one sequence of the trip that he actually enjoyed, though for a very strange reason.
On the other side of the door was a young, very pretty girl. She was not a nun but a novice, the last step before the final plunge. She was in training for the Order of the Precious Holy Blood. Her habit was not as dour as some of the other religious women Hunter had encountered here. Her smile reminded him of Xara.
"I can escort you down to the departure zone," she told Hunter sweetly. He quickly agreed.
With Joxx tagging along reluctantly, Hunter and the young novice walked down the dark hallway, a dead ringer for some of the buildings found atop Special Number One. They spoke, as they always did, about the weather, her advancement into the order, the pleasant ride that was guaranteed between here and New York.
"They say the ocean looks especially green today," she told him, again as always. But this time, she had a bit of a devilish smile.
They reached the bottom floor and walked out onto the emerald marble plaza. An ancient shuttlecraft was waiting for them.
Joxx nearly burst out laughing when he saw this vehicle. Its design most closely resembled the troop shuttles used by the Empire in real time, but only as a distant and forgotten relative. The machine was long, tubular, "buglike" in the ancient slang of Earth. It had gaggles of attachments hanging off of it. Pipes and vanes and unrecessed steering rockets. The power plant in the rear stank of ion-ballast exhaust, and indeed, Hunter had learned, this thing used a dumbed-down version of ion-ballast propulsion, a sort of mini-star engine for quick but uneconomical jumps around the planet.
It just looked unsafe, and that was Joxx's initial complaint through the snickering. But Hunter wouldn't have factored in an unsuccessful flight. Or would he?
