Author: M G Kizzia

Guardian Angel-14 Distress Call, part 3 of 3

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When the one by the Main finished tapping, the screens around the building went down.  Ethan went immediately to hit the recall button, but the man by the Main stopped him.

“Your recall has already been sent.”  The man spoke as he lowered his hood.  He was an Elder, but not a Neanderthal.  The nearest Ethan could come up with was Cro-Magnon or early Homo Sapien of some kind.  Jill put her arm around Ethan as they waited for the man to speak again.  He put his hand near Ethan’s face for a minute as if gauging something before he spoke.

“You have made him as a Gaian,” he said.  “I would not have thought the daughter of the former Emperor would have been taken by such, but thus we have seen.  We are watching you.”

“He is my husband,” Jill said.

The man smiled.  He had very sharp teeth.  “But not until you share your personhood, is it not so?”

“Yes,” Jill said and looked away.

“And you have broken many rules here,” the man continued and Ethan felt the need to interrupt.

“These people could hardly reach their potential if they were wiped out.”

“Yes, but perhaps in this world these artificial persons were destined for greatness.”  The man shrugged.  “We will never know.  But I will not quibble over flesh and blood, only remember, we are watching.”  He turned slightly and spoke to Ethan.  “Child, we were traveling the space ways when the Gaian were still playing with sticks and stones, five thousand years before their vaunted steam engines.  Never forget that we are watching.”  The man pressed another button on his watch and he and the Neanderthal by the door vanished, and everyone, including Ali Pasha, appeared in the control room.  DeMarcos and his men appeared in their rooms down below where Doctor Augustus was waiting to treat the wounded.  Kera Ann, Devon and William appeared in their lounge, and Ethan found that they were not only moved back outside of the building, but his view screen showed a night gathering of humans in a town some twenty miles from where they had been.

Ethan looked at Jill.  It was not exactly concern or fear in her eyes, but it was something near enough.  He wrapped his arms around her as if to say it would be all right, and from her response, he guessed it was the right thing to do.

“What is this?”  Ali Pasha looked at the spot on the floor.

“You.”  Ethan said over his shoulder

###

When they were ready, Ethan let the doorway grow slowly near the bonfire where a large number of people were gathered, and he turned up the brightness to be sure people saw.  Some ran off, others waited quietly or stared in amazement, some pulled out guns but made no other hostile moves.  Fortunately, no one panicked.  Ethan projected Kera Ann, Devon and William just outside the door, and himself and Jill a step back.  Jill tweaked the projection so she and Ethan were a little fuzzy and glowed a little like the door.

“Billy, put down that stupid weapon.  We’re coming out in a minute and I don’t plan to be shot,” Devon shouted.

“We did it!”  William shouted even louder and threw his hands up in joy.  “Type ones are restored and the relay station is no more.”  Ethan had checked and the building was completely gone.  It took a few minutes for that word to spread before the cheers started, followed by music and dancing.  Billy came up to throw his arms around Devon, but passed through the projected image.

“Back up, ding-dong.  I said we will be out in a minute.  And make sure we don’t get shot.”  Devon was being extra careful.

Inside, Jill and Kera Ann hugged.  They had cried together, so it was only natural to hug as well.  “We will be here if something legitimate comes up.”

“I know.  I’m sorry.  I hope you don’t get into too much trouble with the princess.”

“Silly.”  Jill had to smile.  “I am the princess.”

“Can’t I have just one, only to protect Kera Ann, I swear.”  Devon was trying for one of the microwave rifles or handguns.  Ethan had to shake his head.

“Not a chance,” Ethan said.  “Besides, she has her own defenses against such weapons.  She will be just fine, and so will you.”  He shook Devon’s hand and William butted in with his own handshake and word of thanks.  In some ways, William was like a kid, like so many computer geeks that Ethan knew back home.

Ethan paused as he had a sudden, strange thought.  He had been changed with all that had happened thus far; irrevocably changed.  In a real sense, this earth was his home as much as his earth.  All the worlds were the earth, his earth, no more and no less regardless of the differences.  Even the world of the Elders, wherever that might be, was no more than another earth.  In that sense, they were all his home, and they were all his people; and all at once, Ethan no longer felt afraid or worried about the Nelkorians, the proverbial Chernobyl, or any others who had turned to hopeless wickedness.  Suddenly, he felt sorry for such people.  It was a major revelation, and maybe the one revelation that the Gaian hoped the guardians would have.  That would certainly explain why they took guardians in training out into the worlds.

“Keep in mind.”  Ethan spoke at last to Devon and William before he let them go, while Jill commiserated with Kera Ann.  “You still have work to do, yes, but maybe on this world the AIs would have achieved greatness in time.  Maybe it was what your world was meant to become.  We will never know, and we broke a lot of rules stepping in like this.  Now, the world will become what you make it.  Never forget that.”

Jill smiled at Ethan’s little speech, though Ethan felt foolish after saying it.  Clearly, it impacted their three visitors and gave them much to think about as they exited the ship.  Lars, Ali Pasha, Alexander and Manomar also paused to think.  Ethan felt a little embarrassed.  He was a man of words, but it was spin; it was not supposed to be profound.

###

Later that night, Ethan and Jill spent a little time together on the roof of the Ridgetop hospital before they went to their room.  There were some men who needed healing, and Doctor Augustus, good man that he was, was reluctant to turn them over to a bunch of early twentieth century hacksaws.  Ethan imagined the world of Peter Alexander and Colonel deMartin as early twentieth century.  “Hacksaws” was the Doctor’s word.

“You’re warm,” Jill said, pulled in real tight to his chest and held his arm around her with her free hand

Ethan had a thought.  “All right,” he said.  “So who is trying to kill us?”

“Probably agents of my ex-husband,” Jill said.  “Don’t worry about it.”  Jill did not want to talk about it.

“The present day emperor of the Gaian people and all the known worlds,” Ethan said.  She turned his face so she could look into his eyes.

“That’s the guy.  But it is getting chilly up here.  Let’s go down to our room and get warm.”

Ethan did not move right away.  He considered his situation.  Here he was with the Gaian princess, her former husband, the current emperor was trying to kill them, and she had a son, besides; but then she was nearly a thousand something years old, so maybe the only odd thing was that she only had one child.  He looked into her remarkable blue-gray eyes and all of those thoughts left him without coming to any conclusion.  He could not think of anything but loving those eyes, and he decided that maybe they should go down and warm up before his thoughts overheated.

Guardian Angel-14 Distress Call, part 2 of 3

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Jill looked at Ethan.  Ethan nodded and spoke before she could say something that would make their work more difficult.  “I would like to make a side trip first,” he said.  “We can’t send deMartin’s troops out without giving them a fighting chance.”  Jill raised an eyebrow.  For once, she was not dictating what they needed to do, and she was a little leery of what Ethan had in mind, though she agreed in her heart that they had to do something.

“What was the objective in this battle?”  The Colonel asked.

“The building beyond the battle is a relay station that William has determined to be the critical point.  Obviously, the AI understand this as well.  We did not expect them to be guarding this place with everything they have got.”

“Yes,” William interrupted.  “If we can get into the system and reprogram the relay, we can shut down every type one robot on the planet.  It will not end the war, but there are not that many type two Androids yet.  It should at least give us a fighting chance.”

Ethan jumped up and realigned the view screen.  He zoomed in on a distant building.  “Destroying it won’t help?” he asked.

“No!”  All three locals shouted, before Devon explained.  “William says destroying it will send the type ones into a state of confusion where they will probably start killing everyone and everything, human and android alike.”

“Birds, animals, anything that moves.”  William said.  “Our only hope is to reprogram it first and send the program across the system.  Then we can shut it down, safely.”

“Destroying it at that point might be safest.”  Devon concluded.  “So it can’t be re-reprogrammed.”

“Is there hope for us?’  Kera Ann asked in a most forlorn voice.  She, alone, really understood that this was out of line.

Jill said nothing.  She just reached out and gave the girl a big hug, and Ethan said, “Oh, boy!”

###

Ethan guided the point of contact to another world and set it to hover over the Ridgetop hospital.

“Ethan?”  Jill wondered what he had in mind.

“If we are going to help, we have the soldiers but not the equipment.”  He explained without looking at her.  He did not want her frown to interrupt his thoughts.  “We need the weapons to overcome the obstacles, and I am sure Doctor Augustus will be glad to get rid of them.”

“The Elders are not going to like this.” Jill shook her head.

“A commando raid,” Ethan responded, and in a sense pleaded with Jill not to object even though he was looking at the Colonel.  “Quick in and quick out.”

“That might work if you can get us close enough,” DeMartin agreed.

Ethan spoke into the projector, which took his image and voice into the lounge where Kera Ann, Devon and William were waiting, nervously.  “Sit tight.  We only need permission.”  He adjusted the projector to the holding tank where the soldiers were waiting as patiently as soldiers can wait.  Jill, Ethan and deMartin were all projected there.  “Does your army know the phrase, “Hurry up and wait?”  Ethan asked.

“Not in so many words,” DeMartin said.  “But near enough.  DeMarcos?”

“I understand, sir.”  DeMarcos saluted, and then they all had to wait for nearly an hour before the expected ambulance came to rest on the roof.  Jill made the front door, and the crew exited to Doctor Augustus’ warm greeting.

“Are you sure you don’t mind?”  Ethan asked after things had been explained.

“Not at all,” Doctor Augustus responded, and he surprised them by adding, “I think I had better come along on this trip.  You may need my skills.”  Jill reached up and kissed the man on the cheek in gratitude.

It was another hour before the soldiers were unloaded and at the warehouse.  Ethan had pried open a case of rifles while Lars, Manomar, Peter Alexander and Colonel deMartin got the pick of the litter.  Even Ali Pasha armed to do his duty, as he said, while Ethan picked up a rifle and climbed to where he could be seen and heard by all.

“This is a microwave pulse emitter, about two chits in advance of anything those androids appear to have, and here is how it works.”

###

Two hours later, Ethan slid the dime-sized front door of the ship through a crack in a window and floated slowly down the hall.  It took another hour to locate all of the cameras and watch equipment and set all of the doors for the three-man commando units to activate at the same time.

“Wait.”  Lars stopped them before they started.  “What if they have a fail-safe to blow the building?”  He asked, animating his idea with a “Boom.”

Jill and Ethan looked aghast.  They had not thought of that.  It was easy enough for the ship to check with a quick scan of the building.  They found several booby traps, which were easily disarmed.  Jill and Ethan breathed again.

When they were ready, Ethan pushed the first button.  Several groups of soldiers had to climb up from the floor, and two had to drop down on ropes from the ceiling, but it was less than sixty seconds before all watchers, the eyes and ears of the enemy, were shut down.  Now the androids would have no way of knowing what was going on inside the building.

Ethan pushed the second button, and the ship’s particle and energy screens extended to encompass the whole structure.  DeMartin still needed to get men to the building perimeter to be safe, but the robot troops that were continuing to scrounge around the battlefield would not be able to break back into the building.  On the other hand, the robots inside the screens would not be able to break out, and that was where deMartin and his men would have a real fight.  It would have been a simple matter for Ethan to send out a little energy pulse and deactivate them all, but Jill would not let him go that far.

“We have already stepped way out of bounds here,” she said.  Ethan noticed her stiff upper lip.  She knew full well, some men would die because of her decision.

Jill opened the door for William, Devon and Kera Ann to get at the central control system with their program already loaded on to a portable drive.  Lars, Manomar, Alexander and Ali Pasha went with them as well as their trusty Sergeant and his two companions from the automobile.  It was a simple matter to start the program, but it would take time to download, and, of course, as soon as the new information started to go out into the relay system, and the booby traps failed to trigger, every robot in the place started for the control room.

“This will restore the “Help and do no harm” directive in the AIs worldwide,” William said.  “It won’t affect the type twos, but there aren’t that many androids yet, and the factories have all been sabotaged so they can’t make any more, yet.”

“This will give us a better than half chance of survival.”  Kera spoke through her tears of gratitude.  A near one hundred percent chance of success, Ethan calculated, but the world would be a very different and depopulated place.

They soon heard microwave guns going off in the corridors close to the control room.  Jill chose not to look.  Ethan had his finger poised over the hot button, prepared to place a second screen around just the control room if necessary, but Ali Pasha came in the door first.

“It is done,” he reported, and there was sudden silence throughout the building.  Ethan relaxed and Jill dropped her face into her hands, prepared to grieve for the dead.  That moment, however, was interrupted by a streak of white light that came in through the door.  Ali Pasha shouted, something flew from his hand, which Ethan immediately identified as a weapon, and then there was simply a smudge on the ground where the man had once been.

A second figure, one dressed in a cloak came through the door, stepped to the Main, raised his wrist and began to tap on his watch.  A third figure followed.  It was a Neanderthal, and Jill jumped up to stand beside Ethan.

Guardian Angel-14 Distress Call, part 1 of 3

M G Kizzia 1 Comment

They landed in the middle of a battlefield, and Ethan, at least, was glad about being in the ship as opposed to stumbling about with his laptop, unprotected, with Jill unconscious on the ground.  The time was late afternoon, and the sun was going down, but it was not yet dark.  A bomb exploded close to their position and they could hear gunfire in the distance.  It sounded to Ethan’s ears very much like the guns in his own world; but then Colonel deMartin and Peter Alexander also recognized the sound, and so did Lars, so perhaps it was hard to tell much from the sound alone.

A tank, or what Ethan judged to be a tank, came into view, lifting over the slight ridge that separated them from the main battlefront.  The tank hovered on a cushion of air about three feet off the ground.  At first Ethan imagined as far as getting around, and especially when traveling across rough country, it was a much better way than on the tracks or whatever one called those things tanks drove on, or on the wheels of a Humvee.  Then he saw that the tank was listing terribly to one side and having a hard time keeping upright.  Suddenly, two people came rushing out of the top of the vehicle and a third came out of a hatch in the front.  They met on the ground and began to run as hard as they could.

Jill dropped Ethan’s hand and ran both of her hands across the Main with incredible speed.  Ethan watched as a scoop went out from the ship.  It appeared suddenly in that world, and it scooped up the runners and took them right out of that world to deposit them gently in one of the lounges near the control room.  A moment later, the tank exploded in a flash of light far brighter than the late afternoon sun, and with a sound more thunderous than expected.  The ammunition store in the vehicle must have gone all at once, but the view screens adjusted to protect the viewer’s eyes and ears, even if they all recognized the ferocity of that explosion.

“Good God!”  Colonel deMartin swore.

“Agreed.”  Ali Pasha added his sentiments.

Ethan and Jill walked calmly to the interview room, and the others followed except Ali Pasha and Peter Alexander whose eyes remained glued to the view screen.  People began to top the ridge.  They were running away from whatever was behind them.

“Kera Ann Barton.”  Jill spoke first as they entered the lounge.  Of course, the ship had been keyed to hone in on her signature and adjusted their trajectory to intercept her tank.

“Lela?”  Kera Ann looked up.  “Where is Lela?”  She looked confused.

Jill paused, so Ethan spoke.  “Gone.  A Nelkorian trophy.  I’m sorry,” he said.

“Oh!”  Kera Ann threw her hands over her face where grief mixed with fear.  She plopped into a chair as her legs appeared to give out.

“Where are we?”  The black man spoke.

“You must be Gaian,” the white man interrupted.  “Kera Ann told me about you, but I thought she was delusional.”

“This is Ethan.  I am Jillian,” Jill said.

“Devon Crown, formerly of the NFL.”  The black man introduced himself.  “My little companion is William Renquist, and I take it you already know Kera Ann.  Now, where the hell are we?”

“Aboard our ship,” Ethan said.  “And this is Manomar from the Islamic world, Lars from New Sweden, and Colonel deMartin of the Holy Roman Empire.”

“Wow!”  William’s eyes went wide.  Apparently, Kera Ann had shared far more than she should.

“Colonel?  Military Colonel?”  Devon wanted to be sure.

DeMartin’s chits had not yet caught up with the language, but he understood enough to nod.  Luckily, Doctor Augustus had given him that translation chip for his reading beyond the assistance chits Jill had given him.

“We need all the military help we can get.  I don’t suppose you brought your army.”

DeMartin looked at Ethan.  He did not catch enough of what was being asked.  Ethan assured him it was fine to keep quiet for the moment while Jill stepped to a wall.

“Let us see,” she said, and a view screen appeared in the wall space.  People were pouring over the ridge by then and it looked for a moment that they were going to run right into the view screen, but instead, ran out of sight beneath their position.  Jill touched a point on the screen and a second screen behind them lit up to reveal the people streaming away with all speed.  Weapons were being abandoned.  It was clearly a route.

When they all looked back to the ridge, they saw why.  A metal monster on four metal legs rose up behind the rise.  The main section of the monster stood about twenty feet off the ground, and it sent out occasional pulses of what had to be an honest to goodness laser weapon of some sort.  It looked like a red light that fried people, and it appeared to be doing its best to fry as many people as possible.  Ethan thought it looked like a combination of something out of Star Wars and a Wellsian tripod.  No wonder the people with simple bullet type weapons ran.

Ethan did not hesitate to call a section of the Main to his position in the ship.  He felt like a child with a brand-new toy.  His hands stumbled across the controls, but in a moment, the metal monster vaporized.  Jill stayed his hand from further intervention.

“Yes!  Yes!”  Devon shouted.  Kera Ann cried.  William jumped in delight when Jill shut down the view and turned to face the trio.

“Now, what is this all about?”  She asked, sternly.  She exhaled, grabbed Ethan’s hand and dragged him to sit beside her on the couch.  “My husband can be impulsive at times,” she said, almost as an apology.  “Sit,” she commanded.  “Talk.”

Devon, William and Kera Ann who was shocked out of her cry by the hard words, all sat quietly, like children properly scolded.  Manomar and Lars stayed in their usual position by the door, even when Alexander and Ali Pasha came in to take seats in the rear.  Colonel deMartin sat next to Ethan.  He slowly grasped what was being said, and he eventually came to fully understand the pseudo-British tongue as things proceeded.

“We are fighting for our lives!”  William started things by shouting and acted as if that much should be obvious to everyone.  “The human race is facing extinction.”

“I don’t know what planet you alien creatures are from.”  Devon spoke in a more controlled tone.  “But we need all the help we can get.”

“I assure you, we are as human as you,” Jill said plainly, whether Devon believed her or not.

Devon’s face said he was not sure what he believed, but he tried to explain all the same.  “William has been able to overcome some small brains, like in the tank, but most AIs, that is artificial intelligences, are too smart for his hacking abilities.  Our only hope is to shut them down, and anything you can do would be appreciated.  This ship, any men, weapons, technical help would be much appreciated.”  He repeated himself.

“Kera Ann.”  Jill turned from the football player and spoke to the woman.  Kera Ann raised her hand for her companions to be quiet.

“This is my place to explain,” Kera Ann said.  She looked at Devon and William.  “Please don’t interrupt.”  She turned to Jill and Ethan, acknowledging them both with a slight tip of her head.  “I do not know if these Gaian will be able to help us.  This is not an intrusion.  I am sorry if I overstepped my bounds by calling you.”

“You are the guardian for this world.”  Ethan knew that, so the word was more of a statement than a question.

“Yes.”  Kera Ann spoke, and Jill put her hand on Ethan’s knee to suggest that he should hold his tongue and listen as Kera Ann opened up.

“This world got an unnatural early jump start on artificial intelligence, before there were other fail safe measures in place.”  William looked like he wanted to object, but Kera Ann hushed him.  “Lela noted this when she was here, and we talked about potential scenarios.  The worst has come to pass.  The type one robots of her day have become type two androids, and they have rebelled and appear determined to wipe out the human race, beginning with the military.”

“When was Lela here?’  Ethan just had to ask.

“Forty, almost fifty years ago.”  Kera Ann responded, and her companions looked at her suddenly as if through new eyes.  The girl had the appearance of someone who was barely twenty-one.

“And the androids are very hard to kill.”  Devon interrupted without turning his eyes from Kera Ann the girl, or old woman, or whatever she was.  “It takes an almost perfect shot between the eyes to destroy enough brain functions to take them down.”  He quieted then and put his hands up as if to say he would not interrupt again.

Kera Ann resumed.  “There are military units scattered all over the world, but they are isolated and disorganized.  Most of the officers were the first to go, and the command and communications centers are all AI controlled.  In fact, most of life has become AI dependent, from the farms, to the bus drivers, to almost everything.”

“I am a computer specialist, but I can’t break into the higher functions.”  William said, not quite understanding that he was not supposed to talk.

“You know Gaian policy and the way of the guardians,” Jill responded.  “It is not our way to interfere with internal problems.  Each world must rise or fall on its own merits.  Our place is to secure the worlds from outside intrusion to be sure that each world has that chance to meet its own destiny.”

“Then you condemn us to extinction.”  Kera Ann looked down at her hands in her lap.  “The chits I was given, the mixed blessing and curse that they are, have almost certainly calculated that the human race will be wiped out without help.  I called out for Lela as a last resort.”

“I am sorry,” Jill said, sadly.  “But we cannot directly interfere.”

“But I can,” deMartin interrupted.  “I am neither Gaian nor a guardian.”

Guardian Angel-13 Gaian and Guardians, part 3 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“We have to go,” Jill said, and she shared a small chit in her kiss, which gave Ethan a full understanding of the distress call; what there was to be understood.  The guardian was Kera Ann Barton, a former secretary in a bank, and she was calling for help from a world where artificial intelligence got an accidental, very early start.

“We have to go,” Ethan said to the others, interrupting their conversation.  “It seems some are caught in yet another war.”

“DeMarcos.”  The Colonel did not hesitate.  “Gather the three hundred, yesterday, and get them here prepared for battle.”

“Sir.”  DeMarcos stood.  At last, this was something he could understand.

“No, just Ethan and I,” Jill tried.  “We don’t know exactly what the problem is, but if we need help, we can signal ship to ship and bring in the help we need.”

“Not a chance,” Alexander said with a smile.  “We have just been discussing the possibilities and it is important for us to see.

“For our learning,” Ali Pasha interjected.

“Don’t even think about leaving us here while you go off traveling without us,” Lars agreed.

“Besides, I must see with my own eyes,” Ali Pasha added.

Jill and Ethan looked at Manomar.  He smiled.  “I go where you go.”  He spoke calmly, as if that was a given and they had no choice.

“Ethan?”  Jill looked up at him, but Ethan shook his head.

“We don’t know what we are facing,” he said.  “If it turns out to be nothing, everyone can stay on the ship.  I understand the need for trainees to have exposure to other worlds, and no more exposure than necessary, but unless you held something back in your communication chit, I would not mind having the others along, and a unit of trained soldiers besides.”

“You are all hopeless,” Jill said and she returned to her comfortable spot in Ethan’s shoulder.  “I only wish Doctor Grimly were here.”

“Why him?”  Ethan wondered.

“He is the guardian for your world,” she said.  “And he also needs the experience of real time confrontation to understand his job.”

“He is the guardian?”  Ethan asked, and he suddenly felt both relieved, foolish, and a little frightened to think that this beautiful creature actually loved him as she said.

“Of course, what did you think?”  She looked up at him again.

“I thought.”  Ethan’s tongue stumbled.  “I didn’t think.”  He paused and watched Jill’s perfect blue-gray eyes grow big with understanding.

“Oh.”  She breathed as she realized what he must have been thinking.  “I never made it clear.”  Her own tongue began to cramp.  “I’m sorry.  You must have felt.”  She could not bring her mouth to say the word used, but she honestly understood.  He must have thought he was to be the guardian for his world and as far as their relationship went; what could he have thought?

“I didn’t want to lose you,” he said.

“Oh, Ethan.  I am so sorry.  I have given you everything a native Gaian has, not just guardian chits.  I thought you knew that.  You have everything but three, my work chit, Lela’s work chit and my personal chit.”

Ethan paused to think.  “And when we share our personal chits, we will be really married.”  He understood.

“Really and truly married,” she said with genuine longing in her voice as they stood and she turned to face him.

“Jill, I am so sorry I doubted you.”  He placed his arms gently on her shoulders for emphasis.

“Ethan, I am so sorry I misled you.”  Her hands were in his chest.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.”  Both felt a gentle push from behind, Manomar on Ethan’s back and Lars on Jill’s back.  Lars was the one who spoke.

“Would you two hurry up and kiss.  Soldiers are already beginning to show up.”  The Sergeant from the automobile ride was in the doorway with his two fellow riders and deMartin came back to the table.

“This won’t take long,” he said.  “What did I miss?”  Jill and Ethan both heard but they were busy, and the others were smiling too hard to answer right away.

###

It took, in fact, about an hour before the soldiers all arrived.  Jill held tight to Ethan’s hand and went to instruct the officers while Ethan tried his key.  The door reformed, but this time Ethan left it against the wall.  Then he had to slide the door along the class three ship to the right location.  When he had it where he wanted it, he played with the key to return the door to its’ normal pure white glowing appearance.  He turned his eyes to Captain deMarcos and smiled while Jill spoke.

“You will find the crew quarters inside.  It includes a lounge and rooms with bunks and comfortable berths.  Please confine yourselves to that portion of the ship, and if you want something to eat or drink, just ask.  The ship is programmed to supply your needs and will direct you.  There are also view ports, but I doubt you will see much until we arrive.”

“In there?”  DeMarcos doubted it.

Colonel deMartin laughed.  “Sergeant,” he said, and the Sergeant reached for the shimmering door.

“Excuse me, Captain.”  He squeezed by and went in, followed by his two and then the rest.  After a moment of hesitation, deMarcos also took a deep breath and followed.  Ethan, meanwhile, had fiddled with the key and figured out how to open a second door.

“Any who wish to ride with the troops are welcome,” he said.  “The crew’s quarters are much more comfortable than the control room.”  He paused.  “Of course there are lounge rooms and quarters behind the control room, too.”  He realized he knew more than he thought; only he had to ask the right questions to get at that information.

Everyone declined his offer to ride with the troops.  They went into the control room, and Jill immediately took Ethan to the Main.  Alexander and deMartin took up their spot by the viewport.  Lars and Manomar were content to stand by the door, and Ali Pasha interrupted with a question.

“How do we get from here to the lounge?”

Jill turned and pointed to a blank space on the wall.  It was a door, but built so perfectly into the wall, no one would know unless they already knew.  Once she pointed, the door outline was made visible and Ali Pasha nodded.  The Colonel’s military mind went a step further.

“Any enemy in the control room would have a hard time finding their way into the rest of the ship,” he said, and Jill mimicked Ali Pasha’s nod.

“There,” Ethan interrupted.  He let Jill check his work before he engaged the ship.  The men were all loaded by then and their door was temporarily deleted.  He had shrunk the front door to the size of a nickel, and was ready to go.  Jill smiled and activated the system herself while Ethan held her free hand.  As far as he was concerned, he was never going to let go again.

************************

Be sure to return Monday (Tuesday and Wednesday) for Guardian Angel-14, Distress Call.

Happy Reading…

 

Guardian Angel-13 Gaian and Guardians, part 2 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Jill was exceptionally quiet during lunch.  She had a lot of information to process through her chits.  Upon entering Lela’s ship, Ethan’s chits also caught up with all of the most up-to-date information of the Gaian people, or at least what Lela had processed since her last contact with home.  That current history triggered the whole recent history of the Gaian people in general which went running through Ethan’s mind at a rapid pace.  Jill, however, had swallowed Lela’s back-up work chit, so besides getting up dates from home, she had to process through all of the worlds Lela had been to, all of the Guardians she had established, and all of the work that was left undone.  Fortunately, the others were occupied, being very animated about their adventures, though poor Captain deMarcos was hardly able to follow most of it.  Inevitably, the question came.

“Who are these Nelkorians?”

“A people the Gaian destroyed long ago.”  Ethan answered for Jill.  He took her hand and let her rest her head on his shoulder.  “Only they missed a few.”  He considered that revelation.  The Elders was the name he now knew belonged to his Neanderthal and, to his surprise, some other proto-human people; but apparently those Elders missed a few Nelkorians as well.  Ethan understood that in general, the Elders, like Jill’s people, felt that the people in the worlds should rise or fall on their own merits and thus they stood firmly against the importation of technology for which the local world might not be ready.  Curiously, they were less inclined to stand against one world invading another, but in the case of the Nelkorians, they agreed that the risk of destruction to the worlds was too great.  But the Elders missed a few as well, and that told Ethan that even they were not infallible.

“Gaian?”  Alexander was asking.

“Lord?”  Manomar nudged Ethan.  Somewhere along the line, Manomar decided that Lord and Lady were appropriate titles of respect for Ethan and Jill.  To the others, they were still plain Jill and Ethan, but the others did not object to Manomar’s designation.  “Lord?”

Ethan shook himself free of his own thoughts and looked up.

Alexander tried again.  “Gaian people?”

Ethan nodded slightly and looked at Jill before he spoke.  She had her eyes closed, but she was not sleeping.  “Like everyone, they simply call themselves human beings and their world earth, but in the worlds they are known as the Gaian people.”  He looked at Peter Alexander who probably got enough information from Lela to ask the question.  Ethan looked around at the rest of the strange collection of people and ended with a look at Manomar.  He noted that the others knew nothing about it at all.  “Her mother’s name was Gaia and her father was what you would call Emperor of the known worlds.  Jillian was born on the same day they discovered the alternate earths.”

“Known worlds?”  Ali Pasha wondered if he misunderstood the phrase.

“Not alternate Earths.”  Ethan pointed up toward the ceiling and Lars got it immediately.

“The Stars!”  Lars shouted.  “I always wanted to travel,” he said, confidentially to Manomar.  Ali Pasha looked distressed.  Up until then, he had continued to think of the stars as Allah’s windows to heaven whose light was allowed to shine into the darkness.  Ethan knew that Ali Pasha would have some processing of his own to do.  Thus far, Ethan thought he had done rather well, considering he had the furthest to go in restructuring his mind and the way he always understood the world to be.

“But Gaian?”  Colonel deMartin took up where Peter Alexander left off.

“Yes.”  Ethan said and pulled himself together to speak.  “When the explorers first went into the worlds, they called themselves Gaian, the explorers of Gaia in honor of their queen.”

“I’m glad they did not call themselves Jillians,” Jill mumbled.

“In honor of her birth,” Ethan told the others, and then he answered the unspoken question.  “The Gaian discovered the Nelkorians about three hundred years ago.  The Nelkorians were preparing to spread across the worlds, and Jill’s people understood that they had to be stopped.  The Emperor gathered the fleets from the frontiers.  The ship.”  Ethan pointed to the picture of the door on the wall.  “It is a class three fighter-destroyer, much bigger than the little control room we saw.  The Gaian tracked the Nelkorians across the worlds, and concluded the war after about a hundred years, though some say there are still searchers in the far-away places.”

“They missed a few,” Alexander said.

Ethan nodded.  “I guess those far-away searchers suspected as much.”

Jill sat up and looked at the Cherokee and the colonel.  She spoke sharply, but her eyes were not exactly in focus, like a person speaking out of a trance.  “Beware of any children born without faces.  You must watch carefully over the next year, and destroy any you find.  Do not be tempted to believe they can be turned to good, no matter what they say.  Such power inevitably corrupts absolutely.  They must be utterly destroyed.”  She closed her eyes again and leaned back into Ethan’s shoulder while Alexander and deMartin passed a look.  They had not considered that there might be others, and in fact they both pictured that there might be one or more presently in the Old World even as they spoke.

“So, Gaian is a name in honor of Jill’s mother.”  Lars brought them back to the subject.

Ethan confirmed that, and then fell again into his own thoughts while the others began to speculate on what other challenges might be out there in the Worlds.

Ethan considered that at the conclusion of the war, Gaia, the one who led the charge against the Nelkorians got killed, and Jill’s father virtually shut down the explorations of the Worlds as a result.  “It is too dangerous,” the man said.  “And it is not our place to dictate who can and cannot live.”  He was the one who originally instituted the complete hands off policy, and then he promptly died of a broken heart, or so they said.  Nothing else was ever proved, despite the conspiracy theorists.

Jill’s first husband took over, but then Jillian and Archon divorced over the issue of the worlds; but no, that was not strictly true.  In the scan of a thousand years of history, and as near as Ethan could figure things out, Jill and her husband separated when their son turned twenty-one.  That meant they were really only married for twenty-two strained years.  It also meant they had been separated for some eight centuries before being formally divorced.  The worlds issue had just been the excuse to finally end things.

Ethan reached down to softly brush Jill’s lovely black hair, to keep it out of her eyes.  She shifted a little to acknowledge his gentle, loving touch, but her eyes remained closed.

Meanwhile, Ethan’s mind kept him on track.  Her first husband continued her father’s policy of hands off, isolationism, but Jill took after her mother.  She knew there were some people finding their way into the worlds, like the Nelkorians, and they had to be stopped, because if they did nothing, one day it would come back to haunt the Gaian.

The guardian program was conceived.  The guardians could do a lot on their own, and stop most threats, but they also served as watchers for the Gaian who could not be everywhere.  The Gaian rebels, and that was what they were considered being involved in an essentially outlawed activity, managed to get their hands on a large number of warships that were brought in for the war.  There were many in the military that understood the seriousness of external threats and secretly agreed with Jill.  With those ships fitted with the transitional technology developed for the war, Jill and her rebel followers were able to begin establishing guardians across the worlds.  Suddenly, Ethan felt Jill’s uneasiness in a new way.  She looked up at him.  They were truly becoming a couple, becoming unbelievably close and growing to read each other well, and their chits went a long way to bring them into sync with each other.

Guardian Angel-13 Gaian and Guardians, part 1 of 3

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After less than ten minutes, Jill came back to fetch the others, but even in that short time, Ethan, Lars, Manomar and Ali Pasha began to grow nervous.  They heard noises in the house, guard type noises, and the guards seemed to be wondering what happened.  Ethan guessed that the Nelkorian controlled everyone in the house, including the governor, that is, if he did not take on the illusion and play the part of the governor directly, and now everyone in the house was probably dead like the man by the door.  All the same, the quiet could not last forever.  Ethan doubted the Nelkorian wasted the energy controlling the dozens of guards, and thus the living guards were beginning to rouse and wonder if something was going on that they should know about.

“Hurry.”  Jill sensed the urgency.

Ethan was already feeling better, but Manomar helped him walk.  Lars, with his six-shooter reloaded, kept watch on the rear door while they all headed toward the garage that held the ship.  Up close, it looked even more like a mere glowing white slab no thicker than Ethan’s thumb.

“How will we all fit in that little space?”  Ali Pasha wondered.

“Transdimensionally engineered, I bet,” Ethan said, in reference to his memory of that old television show.  Jill smiled at him and helped him through the doorway.  They stepped into a spacious control room.  “That means it is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside,” he told the scholar.

“Impossible,” Ali Pasha protested.  Then Jill spoiled the illusion by explaining.

“Actually, the ship is in another dimension altogether, resting and stable on a dead world.  There is a back door I could show you, but there is not much to see.  The front door is the point of contact in Peter Alexander’s world, and it can be minimized to the size of a single complex molecule and still maintain a presence in the world.  The standard technique is to minimize it to the size of somewhere between a quarter and a dime for travel.  That is, a small coin.”  She showed the size with her hand.  “Of course, you won’t feel any movement when we travel because we won’t actually be moving; only the point of contact will be shifted from one place to another.  That point can be shifted to anywhere in the world almost instantly.”  She turned and spoke to Ethan.  “It can be shifted to almost anywhere in the galaxy, but that takes a little more time.”

 Jill took Ethan by the hand and brought him to the Main.  There were places there for a left hand and a right hand.  “We are set to encode,” she said.  “I have taken Lela’s duplicate chit and reset the controls.  Can you put your left hand here?”  She asked with a sound of such concern for him, it made Ethan pause.  He wondered how much mileage he could get out of his injuries, but he complied and set his left hand in place, and he leaned a little, not that he did not need to lean.  When her right hand was on the other palm spot, the system activated.  “We are linked now with the ship,” she concluded and removed her hand.

Ethan stumbled over to a chair, sat, and watched while Lars and Manomar stood like guards by the door.  Alexander and deMartin, having been inside for a bit longer than the others, found seats by a screen which showed in a virtual three-dimensional way what was happening outside, and Ali Pasha walked around the room and tried hard not to touch anything.

The guards were finding bodies.  They burst into the room the ship’s crew had just vacated and one pointed to the glowing door in the garage outside the window as if something was happening.  “The door is nickel size.”  Jill announced, though they could still see all around the ship as if the ship was actually present in that world and had outside cameras pointed in every direction.  “Time to go.  We have an appointment in Elizabethtown.”

“Hold on!”  Ali Pasha shouted.  He remembered his ride in the automobile in that world.  Everyone attempted to grab on to something, but Jill spoke even before the shuffling finished.

“Too late.  We are already there.”  The view screen flashed briefly, like one might change pictures in a digital camera, and then it showed a perfect view of the inside of the Inn in Elizabethtown.  Captain deMarcos was there, fiddling with some papers.

“Wait,” Ethan said before Jill could enlarge the plain, white door.  “Give it something more in line with the décor.”  He was still thinking about the police box.  Jill smiled and appeared to think for a minute.  Then she touched a few places on the Main and made a gothic door looking of solid oak with scrolls all up and down and around the frame, and carvings of gargoyle type faces on the front.  It grew slowly from nothing to stand near the wall.  The door stood upright, but with no visible means of support.

“I would normally blend the door into the wall,” Jill admitted.  “But I like this effect.”

“Allow me.”  DeMartin grinned wickedly and got into the spirit of the play.  Poor deMarcos stood up, dropped his jaw and bulged his eyes.  The innkeeper came up beside him along with a couple of soldiers who did not know whether to draw their weapons or run.  Jillian cracked the door.

“Captain deMarcos,” deMartin roared, and found that Jill had put a touch of echo in the voice.  “Is that report finished yet?”

DeMarcos went to his knees and threw his hands over his face.  The soldiers looked frozen in place, but the innkeeper had no trouble running away as fast as possible.

“Oh.”  Ali Pasha stepped up to the front and shoved the colonel back a step.  “You are most unkind.”  He pretended offence though he appeared to laugh a little.  He forced the door.  “It is only us.  We won’t hurt you.”  He stepped out.

“Not much anyway.”  DeMartin was right on his heels.  “Get up deMarcos.  We have guests.”

“Sir?”  DeMarcos did his best to pull himself together, and the soldiers straightened up on sight of the Colonel, though they fell apart again on seeing everyone pile out of a doorway to nowhere.

Ethan got a key to the ship.  “Though you can think it to you and open it with a chit since it is tuned to you as it is to me.”  Jill explained as she pointed her key at the door, and the door pushed to the wall, shrank, and ended up looking like a framed picture of a gothic door hung some four feet up the wall.

Guardian Angel-12 Nelkorian, part 3 of 3

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Something caught Ethan’s eye.  It was disguised with a masterful illusion, but he had his chits working overtime, trying to see a weakness in his opponent.  He knew it was the monster’s transitional unit, though it looked strangely fabricated out of paper and string, as Jill would say.  It was hardly the product of advanced technology.  He did not have to think, though, about what to do.  He had secreted a microwave handgun into his jacket and managed to keep it hidden, even from Jill.  It came out, and in a second he had melted half the unit.  The Nelkorian screamed and Ethan got slammed to the wall.  He felt for a moment like his insides were being torn out.  He put every ounce of strength he had into his screens, particle, psychic, energy, and even managed a final shot at the Nelkorian himself before the gun got ripped from his hand by a psychic wave and crushed into scrap metal.  He was not surprised the microwaves had no effect on the monster.  Then suddenly it was over so fast, Ethan could hardly believe it.

His actions allowed Jill the second of liberty she needed to activate the fail-safe chits planted deep in her charges.  Ali Pasha got the gun from his man who was disoriented by his master’s preoccupation with trying to tear Ethan apart.  Colonel deMartin and Lars both wheeled and fired simultaneously.  Lars’ antique heavy caliber bullets struck the Nelkorian square in the chest with three strikes which tore half the monster’s back off when they came out the other side.  They took most of the man’s heart with them.  DeMartin’s bullet struck right between the man’s eyes, or where the eyes should have been.  At the same time, Manomar’s knife hit the head dead center, while Alexander’s knife caught in the throat just below the man’s chin.  Then, not knowing what powers of repair the awful creature might have, deMartin pulled his saber and completed the decapitation of the beast.  Manomar and Alexander further divided the skull and brain as they retrieved their knives.  There was no way that Nelkorian was going to threaten or possess anyone again.

Jill was on the ground beside Ethan, crying.  Ethan felt nothing, which sadly included Jill’s kisses.  “My chits tell me I’ll be good as new in a couple of hours.  They wouldn’t lie, would they?”

Jill shook her head and smiled through her tears.  “Like a computer estimate.  They are not capable of lying, not capable of intelligence, remember?”

“Well, they moved pretty fast to keep me out of that thing’s grip,” Ethan said.

Jill nodded this time.  “Their programming is very sophisticated.”

“Microwave handgun?”  Lars interrupted.  He held up the scrap metal.

“Doctor Augustus know about this?”  DeMartin asked as he joined them.

“Yes,” Ethan said.  “He insisted I take it.  He was worried about Jill, and I could not argue about that, but secretly I think he just wanted an excuse to get rid of it.”

“Scrap metal now,” Lars said.

“So is the Parallel Earth Mover.”  Alexander spoke from across the room and used that name for the Nelkorian transitional unit.  Now that the illusion was gone, the primitive unit was plainly visible.

Ethan looked at Jill and she smiled again, without the tears as she spoke.  “I always liked the name Dimensional Watch.”  She shrugged and turned her head toward the chief.  “You need to finish the job.”

“Yes I know,” Alexander agreed.  “This must be completely dismantled and melted down, like it never existed.  I know my job, but God willing this will be the one and only time I have to do this.”

There was a loud moan by the door.  Manomar was there with Ali Pasha.  The black headed man rolled on the floor and he did not look well at all.

“By the Prophet!” Ali Pasha yelled and took their attention.  “Look!  The bullet is coming out.”  He tore his bloody sleeve.  He had been shot in the arm and the bullet had lodged against the bone.  They all looked.  Sure enough, they could actually see the bullet coming up to the surface.  In a moment, it clattered to the floor and Ali Pasha’s wound began to close.  “Remarkable, amazing, outstanding!”  Ali Pasha spoke with glee even as there was another moan from the man on the floor.

Manomar knelt down, now that he knew his Master was going to live.  He quickly turned the man’s head.  The man vomited all over the Persian rug and then stopped moving forever.

Jill held Ethan on his feet with the help of Lars’ strength on Ethan’s other side.  She spoke.  “Anyone possessed for a long time will probably not survive.  Theory says they die after a time, but the Nelkorian can keep their personality and body functioning for years.”

“You wiped them out?”  Ethan asked.  He remembered what she said earlier.

“Even the Neanderthals helped on that one.  Doctor James Nelkor perfected a technique for genetic manipulation and enhanced psychic abilities by removing all sensory distractions.  It was a monstrous thing to do, but then the monster killed him in true Frankenstein fashion and began duplicating himself in what he called his children.  If they had simply destroyed their own earth, it would have been bad enough, but once they broke into the Worlds, we had to act.  Even my ex-husband understood that much.  I thought we got them all, but apparently we did not.  I only hope there are not too many of them left and hiding.”

“You gave us the chit to escape them, though.”  Alexander spoke up from the corner.

“Yes, but it was dormant and only as a precaution.  It had to be activated.  I think that needs to be changed now across the worlds.  I need to get to Lela’s ship and contact the coordination team.”

“Right.”  Alexander stepped up and pulled his leather and gold necklace out from beneath his shirt.  There was something like a magnetic bar on the end of the leather chord.  It was not a magnetic bar, of course, but a key, and Jill took it and went out back with Alexander and deMartin to guard her, while Ethan sat in a comfortable chair and Lars and Manomar covered the dead.  Ali Pasha sat beside Ethan and still stared at his own arm.

“Wounded for the cause.”  Ali Pasha said proudly and he pointed to his arm.  It was a real badge of honor even if in another hour, it would be as if it never happened.

Ethan had another thought, and he was not smiling.  “I was wondering what might happen if a Nelkorian got loose on my world.”

“Or mine.”  Ali Pasha quickly sobered

“One Guardian per world hardly seems enough.”  Ethan thought out loud.

“I hardly thinking this was easy.”  Ali Pasha reverted with his words again, but Ethan understood.

************************

Next Monday, (Tuesday and Wednesday)  Some things straighten out even as some things get complicated in Guardian Angel-13, Gaian and Guardians.

Guardian Angel-12 Nelkorian, part 2 of 3

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They reached the outskirts of Balazarius, the port city of the Byzantines, around eight the next morning.  Runners had gone out the night before so they hoped everything was in place and ready to go.

“I remember you telling me about your Fourth of July.”  Alexander explained to Jill and Ethan.  “I thought we might call it Cherokee Peace Day, or maybe Cherokee Pride.”

Ethan hardly had time to wonder what Alexander meant as the first rockets and fireworks cracked in the sky.  Soon enough, there were firecrackers and such going off everywhere, and quite a few Byzantines appeared to join in the fun while the crew closed in on the Governor’s Palace.

When they arrived outside the palace, Peter Alexander signaled someone in the crowd and a whole flock of children ran to the front door of the palace with flowers in their hands.  “Come and see.”  They shouted in their excitement, while they showered the guards with flowers and banged on the front door.  “Come and see.  Come and see.”  As was hoped, the guards from the entrance to the Governor’s gardens went to see.

“Now,” Jill said.  She dragged the crew across the street and straight through the garden gate.  If she had not insisted, Lars, Manomar and Ali Pasha would have stayed to see the fireworks.  Colonel deMartin, Ethan and Alexander each had to grab a man and drag them forward.  When they got inside the garden, Alexander swore.  The ship had been moved after all.

“Actually.”  The voice came from the porch where the same black headed man dressed in flowery clothes and sporting feathers, who had argued for war in the face of General Gordon, and who had berated the Cherokee in general, and Peter Alexander specifically as cowards, sat sipping what looked like sweet tea.  “My Master has sheltered the vehicle inside a covering to keep it out of the weather.”  He smiled and motioned with his arm to invite them in.  “Please,” he said.  “My Master is waiting for you.”

Lars looked mad at having been caught.  Ali Pasha and Manomar thought nothing of it.  But Jill and Ethan both looked at Alexander and Colonel deMartin.  Both men shrugged at the word “Master,” and Alexander whispered.  “Even the Byzantines no longer keep slaves.  Why should they when modern machines can do the work better, faster and cheaper?”

They went in.

A man with a glass of whatever that liquid was had his back to them, while the man they knew from the peace talk went to stand by the door and await orders.  The ship, meanwhile, was clearly visible through the back window in what looked like a hastily built garage without a front door.  Ethan stared for a minute, because the so-called ship looked like no more than a door.  It was a shimmering white slab of light, nothing more, and hardly what he expected.

“I made mine look like a British Police Box in London.”  Jill whispered.  “That was before I ever heard of the Good Doctor.”

“I remember that show.  I used to love him as a kid.”  Ethan whispered back hastily.

“Who?”  Ali Pasha wondered.

“Exactly.”  Jill and Ethan agreed, but quietly because the man by the window looked ready to speak.  He appeared first to take a large whiff of air.

“A Gaian,” he said.  “I had the last one’s head on a platter.”  He turned around and Jill gasped.

“Nelkorian!”  The man had no face; no eyes, ears, nose or mouth.  He had gloves on his hands besides, so no skin showed at all apart from the overly large head covered in motley colored gray-green and wrinkled skin.  “You freakish mutant.  We wiped you out.”

The Nelkorian raised a finger.  “You missed a few.”  Ethan felt the wicked smile.  There was no other way to describe it.  He saw features form on that bulbous head, but they did not quite look real to his eyes, and he wondered if his nano-chits were acting on his vision to be sure he did not forget the truth.  Then he felt something probe his mind.

“No!”  He fought it off.  “Psychic defense.  Psychic screen.”  He strained for a minute before he calmed.  Jill grabbed hold of him, but she seemed to be in her right mind as well.

“But he is not Gaian.  I am sure,” the Nelkorian said.  He took another whiff of air.  His lips had moved, but they looked to Ethan as if they were a little out of sync with his words.

“My husband,” Jill said flatly.  “Let these people go.”  She put some strength into her voice, and Ethan saw what was happening.  Colonel deMartin drew his gun as Lars drew his.  They aimed at each other.  Manomar and Alexander had their knives out and faced each other as well.  Poor Ali Pasha was confronted by the man at the door.  That man had drawn a gun and he aimed it point blank at Ali Pasha’s heart.

“He has no sensory organs, but a mind capable of taking over others and sensing things through them.”  Jill spoke hastily as Ethan watched the man across the way lift his glass.  The Nelkorian did not even bother to put the glass to his pretend lips.  Some of the liquid just vanished.

“Taking over others?”  Ethan asked.

“Possessing them.  Maybe thousands,” Jill responded.

“Ahh.”  The man sounded refreshed as if he had actually drunk some of the liquid.  “I do have sensory organs, only they are all internal and able to enhance the experience, shall we say.  But possession is such a nasty word.”

“Let them go, Nelkorian,” Jill demanded.

“Hardly.”  The Nelkorian laughed.  “I want to add your head to my collection, and your husband’s head as a matched set.”  He turned his back again.  Ethan figured with no eyes, the Nelkorian hardly needed to look at them to see them.  “I had planned to turn your ship into a flower pot, and I will as soon as I learn the secret to breaking in.  This is a fine world with much potential, don’t you think?  My brothers and I will enjoy living here, and by the time the husk of this world is all that remains, we will be numerous enough to invade all sorts of places.  Perhaps your husband’s world.  I caught quite a good glimpse of his Earth before the psychic defense of your nasty, inhuman bits went up.”

A young woman’s head, severed at the neck, lifted slowly out of a wicker basket and floated in the air right up to face the couple.  She was a very dead young woman, and Jill had to hide her eyes in Ethan’s shoulder.

“Being possessed by a Nelkorian slowly drains the life force.”  Jill whispered into Ethan’s shoulder while Ethan looked once again at his friends, who were ready to destroy each other.  Apparently, they had no psychic defense, or an insufficient one to fight the Nelkorian.

“The Elders will come,” Jill said.  She turned again to face the monster.  “You will be destroyed here as you were in your home world.”

“I think not,” the Nelkorian responded.  He turned and raised his finger again.  “I believe I have learned how to block even their tracers.  They will hardly know what is happening until it will be too late, even for them.”

Guardian Angel-12 Nelkorian, part 1 of 3

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Ethan heard the shouts, and the laughter.  They surprised a young couple out in the woods, doing what young couples do.  “Paul Bear and Mary Margaret.”  Peter Alexander knew them and named them, and he gave them his best elder stare.

“Chief Peter.”  The young man also knew his elder, and the young couple hurriedly pulled themselves together.  “We did not hear you coming.  We thought no one was around here.”  The young woman hushed the young man so he held his tongue.  Ali Pasha and Manomar kept their composure, but Jill, Ethan and Colonel deMartin had to turn away to keep their laughter to a minimum.  Lars did not bother turning away.  He could not help the guffaw that escaped his lips.

Peter Alexander kept a stern face.  “You need to fetch your fathers and the village council.  I will be along in a minute.”  The young couple stood and stared at the Chief.  “Hurry!”  Alexander shooed them off, and they ran, holding hands, like two deer running from a hunter.

Ali Pasha sighed.  “I see some things remain true, no matter the world.”

“Even across worlds.”  Ethan said with a grin, his eyes on Jill.  The men grinned with him, but Jill turned a little red.  “Oof!”  Jill pushed the briefcase into Ethan’s solar plexus.

“Here.”  Then she grinned at him.

“But they are married, yes?”  Ali Pasha turned to Alexander and pointed at the couple still visible in the distance.

“Not yet.”  Peter Alexander responded in a gruff tone that suggested they might as well be.

“But then this is not good.”  Ali Pasha looked up.  “Don’t you think, Manomar?”

Manomar paused and glanced at Lars before he spoke.  “I think since the Doctor was good enough to heal my, er, condition, I think the whole idea is very interesting.”

Lars guffawed again.

Ali Pasha puffed.  “Then I will get you a wife, and maybe several wives, and then you will think differently.”  Ali Pasha threatened the poor man.

“This way.”  Alexander interrupted, and the Colonel stepped up beside him as they started to walk.

“Quite right.”  DeMartin confided to the chief.  “Some conversations are best left alone.”

When they reached the village, some of the elders had yet to arrive.  Peter Alexander spent the time catching up on the actions of the other chiefs since his mysterious disappearance after the parlay with the Holy Romans.  There were a couple of unfortunate incidents during the withdrawal, and that suggested they were still a long way from real and lasting peace.  Colonel deMartin vowed he would reprimand the offending soldiers, but Alexander stayed the colonel’s anger.

“Our work must cut deeper than that,” he said, and the colonel agreed.  He could not reprimand every overly zealous soldier in the Empire.

The actual council meeting was brief.  As far as anyone knew, Lela’s ship was still in the garden of the governor’s house, but no one knew for sure.  Jill accepted that it was still there.  She knew no one in that world had the means to budge it an inch.  She told the Cherokee Elders that they needed a distraction to get her crew into that garden without being stopped.  That was not going to be easy, but Chief Peter had some ideas, and he, Colonel deMartin, and Lars stayed to discuss those ideas with the willing volunteers while the others got taken to rooms in the inn down the street.

As they walked, Ethan remarked that the village was not what he expected.  There were neat little row houses all along the street, with thatched roofs and gardens lush enough to make an Englishman proud.  There were several larger buildings in the town as well, including the Council Chamber and the Inn of the Green Crow where they were going to stay, and there was also a market square they traveled through, complete with an outdoor fountain topped with a statue of a warrior on horseback.  It was the kind of market square where goods were sold in the open as well as in the shops.

“Somehow, I imagined tents, deerskin clothing and infants squalling from papooses—Papoosi?”

“That is so Hollywood,” Jill said with a small laugh.  “But I think in this world, the Native Nations have learned from the Europeans rather than being overwhelmed by them.”

Ethan understood.  “But colonization started late here, if I understand it.  I imagine it will pick up as the Old World becomes more and more over crowded.”

Jill also imagined that was sadly true.  “But with immunization and early antibiotics, the Natives might not be devastated by foreign diseases in the same way they were in your world.  If this Earth parallels your Earth in that respect, then the Americas are far more populated than you might think.”

“Vespuccians.”  Ethan said.

“What?”

“You know.  Amerigo Vespucci.  God bless Vespucciland.”

“Stop.”  Jill giggled and reached for his arm.

Ethan slipped his arm over Jill’s shoulder.  “Kind of makes me want to come back some day and see what happens.”  Jill took his hand as she agreed.  Meanwhile, she was not going to let his arm escape.

“Outrageous!”  Ali Pasha complained when they finally reached the Inn.  “Nine gold coins for three small rooms.  Why, that is three coins per room for a single night.  Outrageous!”

“There has been inflation since your age.”  Ethan suggested with a grin.

“I should have introduced myself as Peter’s Cherokee Princess.”  Jill apologized.  “Maybe a little Cherokee blood would have gotten us a discount.”

“Never mind,” Ali Pasha said with a smile.  “It is not that important.”  He was honestly willing to shrug it off until Manomar spoke.

“It is only the money my Master borrowed,” he said this with a straight face.

Ali Pasha put his hand to his head and looked sick.  “No reminding me.”  He reverted to his old way of speaking.  Jill and Ethan laughed; but then they all settled down to a hot meal that did not come out of a vending machine.

Alexander, deMartin and Lars came in shortly, and the first thing Alexander did was get Ali Pasha’s gold back.  “I told the innkeeper to charge it to the army, and if the army did not pay his price, he could send a bill to my wife.”  Alexander laughed loudly.

“Eh?”  Ethan and Manomar looked up.

Alexander laughed again.  “We own the Cherokee Trading Post in Champagua.”  He pulled out a map of the Eastern United States that he had gotten to show deMartin.  Ethan saw no states, of course, only tribal territories whose boundaries looked rather fluid.  Alexander pointed to his city and Ethan, having recognized the outer banks, realized he was pointing to Charlotte, North Carolina.  “Our central city, what you might call the capitol.  We sell a little of everything at the Trading Post and cheaper than anyone else.”

“Wal-Mart,” Jill joked, as she took Ethan’s arm and leaned forward for a look at the map.

“But the innkeeper groaned when I said bill my wife.  She is a well known miser.”  Alexander laughed again.

“Mine, too, keeps a tight fist on her money,” Lars said, seriously.

“My former wife was only good for spending money, I think,” Colonel deMartin said.

They looked at Ali Pasha who threw his hands at them.  “You don’t even want to know.”

Ethan sat back and placed his hands behind his head.  “I have no money.  It simplifies things.”  They all looked, but Jill shook her head and paraphrased deMartin’s earlier comment.

“Some conversations are best left alone.”

Everyone laughed and ate while Alexander explained what they had in mind.

Guardian Angel-11 Trouble in Paradise, part 3 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Things improved between Ethan and Jill after that, though there were still some difficult moments.  Ethan could not shake the idea that as soon as he was in place at home, she would leave him.  At this point, though, he did not let it control him.  He felt that every moment he had with her was blessed.

“Vulnerability is from the neck up,” Jill said in her teaching.  “We have a saying in my universe that everyone has to die sometime, but you can even survive a wound to the heart if it is not too extensive.  If your chits have time to repair the damage and keep the blood circulating to the brain, you will survive, but from the neck up you are irreplaceable.  Understand this.  Brain cells can be regenerated and memory can be restored, but only as long as your brain continues to receive blood and oxygen.  Four minutes is about as long as you will survive otherwise.”

“Princess Jillian.”  Peter Alexander had a question.  He often referred to her in that way, but everyone imagined that he was referring to her by her quarter of Cherokee blood.  “I am still unclear about the screens you speak of.  I understand how a particle screen can ward off small particles, but the energy screens confuse me.  I do not understand their purpose.”

Jill nodded.  “We have already been protected against the low level of radiation that lingers in this place since the war, but I know you cannot see that.  That is something I was concerned about, and so I concluded that another demonstration was in order.  Doctor?”

The Doctor got up from his seat as a student and turned to help teach.  “I was hoping we would not have to do this,” he said, as he picked up what everyone recognized as a rifle, though none had seen its like before.

“This is a Legionaire-47, a state of the art weapon in the war.  It fires a high concentration pulse of microwaves guaranteed to turn your enemy into toast.”  He lifted the weapon to his shoulder and pointed it at the target that had been set up.  The target was a straw man, like a scarecrow, dressed in clothes and a kind of makeshift armor.  “I hate these things.”  Doctor Augustus mumbled as he took aim.  When he pulled the trigger, the straw man burst into flame, and even the armor melted.  “As you can see, it works all too well.”

“And now the demonstration,” Jill said as she stepped forward, while Ethan put out the fire.  The Doctor checked to be sure the rifle was charged for another round, and then he aimed it right at Jill’s heart while everyone held their breath.  He fired.  Jill merely smiled.

“Even if you cannot see the microwaves, you can see that I remained unaffected by the weapon.  This is a rather simple weapon.  The energy screens will protect you from far more sophisticated and powerful energy sources, but do not depend on them.  There are some weapons strong enough to fry you like the straw man, despite the screens.  My own people have such weapons, and there are a few others we know of.  The nano-chits can only generate so much power.  Even the particle screen cannot deflect an arrow, spear or bullet head on, nor can it stop a knife or sword delivered directly with strength.

“Still, that is remarkable.”  Ali Pasha spoke up.  “May I see that rifle as it is called?”  Everyone laughed a little.  Ali Pasha wanted to see and touch everything.

When the morning session was over, Ethan found Jill in his arms.  “Are you ready to go?” she asked.  They intended to go to Peter Alexander’s world and attempt to retrieve Lela’s ship.

“Tell me again why I am going?” he responded with a question.

“Because I can’t do this without you,” she answered.  She was getting tired of answering such questions.

“Yes you can,” he said and gave her a little kiss.  “You made a transitional unit on my world out of paper and string.  I think you can do anything you set your mind to.”

“All right.”  She accepted the compliment.  “Then I don’t want to do it without you.”

“And I don’t want you to do it without me.”  He kissed her again.

Jill returned his kiss and then went to get her things for the trip and wondered why he could not just love her without hesitation and without all the questions.  She needed him, even if he thought she did not need him.  She loved him.  How many times and in how many ways did she have to say it?  She had been alone for centuries before finding Ethan.  In him, she found someone she could love again.  That was something she once thought she would never be able to do, after Archon.  She knew there was no explaining it, him being from a middle high Earth and her being from paradise, and as hard as she tried, she could not seem to convince Ethan that it was true.  But it was true all the same.  She loved him.  Why couldn’t he just love her in return?  She wiped her eye and put her smile back on before she turned to face him.

In a short while, Ethan and Jill were in the front seat of a hovercar driven by Doctor Augustus.  Peter Alexander and Colonel deMartin were in the middle buckets, Lars and Manomar with Ali Pasha squeezed between them were seated in the back, and they were all headed toward somewhere on the Maryland shore.

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“This is a red area.  That is, a heavy radiation area.”  The doctor spoke as they searched around for some landmark, which might help Alexander get his bearings.

“I’m trying, but the landscape seems so changed,” Alexander said, and not for the first time.  “Even the coast looks altered.”

“I’m not surprised,” the doctor responded.  “The North Augustine Imperial Capitol was not far from here, up the Pontus River.  This place took a real pounding during the war.”

“There.”  Alexander pointed suddenly, though the Doctor could not see his finger.  “Those rocks are known to me.”

“That jetty?”  The Doctor asked.  It looked to him like a thousand others that stuck out into the sea, but he nodded.  It was almost directly over what had been the city of Balteninus.

“The Port of Balazarius,” Alexander said.  “The whole coast is covered with Byzantine farmland.  We will have to go inland to come down unobserved.”

“How far?”  The Doctor asked.

Alexander quickly calculated and translated at the same time.  “Ten miles should be enough.  We should arrive on Cherokee land.”  The Doctor turned the car and headed due west.  He brought them down to a point where they drove a mere ten feet off the ground.  There were no trees, bushes, or life of any kind to obstruct their progress.

“I can hardly imagine how you can see anything familiar in that landscape,” Colonel deMartin said as he sat back against the comfortable cushions.  The others nodded, but Alexander assured them of his certainty.

“I am positive,” he said.  “But even if I am a bit off, I know this is the right area.”

Ali Pasha tried to look out the windows, first around Lars and then around Manomar.  He could not see much, but it all looked like empty desert to him, and it all looked the same.

When they landed, Doctor Augustus hugged Jill and shook everyone’s wrists in his fashion.  “It was lovely having company.  I wish you good luck and Godspeed.”

“Are you sure you won’t come with us?”  Jill asked once again.  “There is no reason you should have to stay in your dead world.  I could find you a guardianship elsewhere, and it would save me the headache of having to find someone local and risk making a poor selection.”

“I am sure,” the Doctor said.  “There are more survivors than I let on at first.  There is a small farming community of some forty families northwest of the hospital, by the Darius River.  They survived the thirty-year winter with me in the hospital and only just moved to begin again.  I think I should visit them and see how things are turning out.  There are others scattered here and there.  I will be all right.”  He kissed Jill on her forehead like a loving father and turned back to his vehicle.

Jill wiped a small tear from her eye and found that Ethan had already wired the dimensional watch, as he still called it, and booted up the computer.  It only took a moment to type in the information.  “Everyone hang on,” she said, and when they were ready, she hit the enter button.

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Next week: Guardian Angel-12 Nelkorian…a person more creature than human… Don’t miss it.