The Spaces in Between (16 page)

11

When thinking about the Ashtar Command the first thing that comes to Cameron’s mind was the Jedi from
Star Wars
. Like the Jedi the Ashtar Command was made up of enlightened folks and mystics that policed the galaxy. Now they didn’t police the galaxy in the way that the Galactic Federation of
Star Trek
policed the beds of green skinned women. The focus of the Ashtar Command was criminals and threats against the autonomy of our reality and Universe.

Much like the Jedi the Ashtar Command was a force to be reckoned with using their archaic weapons and spiritual powers. Also like the Jedi their greatest weakness is their hubris and allowing ‘bad ass motherfuckers’ to run many of their task forces. Another shared weakness was simple math and cartography.

Of course their number one priority and reality’s number one enemy was none other than The Pirate King himself. The Dread Pirate Cameron was rumored to be an unstoppable force with demons at his beck and call, could destroy whole spaceships in the blink of an eye, and had stolen entire star systems. The worst part is as far as the Ashtar Command could investigate all these accounts appeared to be correct.

The most elite of the Ashtar Command was the Paladins. They were a unit of Ascended Masters that no longer had any use for their Physical bodies. So instead they possessed huge mechanized armors so thick most combat ships were not equipped with big enough guns to pierce it. On an anonymous tip they were given the exact coordinates to an error of .003 of the location of Cameron’s ship
The Soulforge
where one presumes they would also find the infamous Pirate King.

Ryoma used Cameron’s legs to run over to the closest screen. He pressed his middle finger on the screen. Nothing happened. He tried to drag the window warning him about the approaching Ashtar Command ship, but it wouldn’t go anyway.

“Shit! I mean…Ship!” Ryoma ordered with Cameron’s mouth. “Take us away from here! To the…edge of the Milky Way.”

“Invalid user” appeared on the screen. Cameron had told him that the
Soulforge
would only respond to his commands. The ship’s security was far more sophisticated than voice recognition or other biometrics. It checked for a soul and the only soul it would respond to was Cameron’s. Having Cameron’s body did no good when it came to running the ship since it was dead.

The ship rocked and creaked when the Paladins’ force ray grabbed it. The ship’s engines and power suddenly shut off, but Ryoma was pretty sure if Cameron was here in spirit instead of body he could fix that easily. Auxiliary lights came on. They were not on a back up generator that could be shut off, but instead cylinders hanging from the ceiling that glowed in the dark.

Normal boarding procedure dictates waiting twenty minutes after life support had been cut off before boarding so the ship’s crew were half dead before they got there. Ships rarely carried enough suits for the entire crew and their oxygen air tanks would last about only twenty minutes anyway. The rush for these suits usually pitted crews against themselves. The real danger is actually freezing to death. The oxygen on a ship lasts approximately three hours after life support failure, but heat only an hour.

Ryoma doubted that the Paladins would wait this long. He was sure they would spare no precaution and had no desire to give Cameron any prep time. Giving Cameron time to think was a major liability, and Ryoma knew that given twenty minutes Cameron could come with up something truly diabolical. He could just see the report “Capture of the Pirate King failed due to the fact he was given the full twenty minutes needed to summon an Elder God.”

He was soon proven correct when he heard the upper deck door breached with a resounding thud while slipping into the armored spacesuit lying in Cameron’s floor. Ryoma took the Atlantean rail pistol from the holster of the space suit and the gripped Cameron’s flintlock with his left hand. He leaned beside the doorway to the hall, and he waited for the sound of mechanized footfalls.

He didn’t have to wait long since they could probably sense him, but Ryoma could feel them too. There were twelve powerful presences in all. He doubted that they could really completely mask themselves from someone looking. The number twelve is significant in that is the total number of all the Paladins under the command of the Ashtar Command. Their mechanized suits were incredibly bulky and the hallway was tiny. Were they going to come at him single file? This was the Plum Room all over again.

The Paladins’ were having problems of their own. The wards around Cameron was too strong for the psychic attacks from a distance. They had to move into extremely close quarters combat to apprehend him. The entire thing felt wrong and to them intuition was a big thing. Still, an opportunity like that could not be passed up. What happened next was even more bizarre. Cameron suddenly turned a corner and opened fire with a rail pistol. Five shots were fired, and two ricocheted back on him. He then fired an antiquated gun, soiled himself, and all hell broke lose.

12

One of the yellow creatures darted at Cameron, and he struck it with the butt of his gun. It wobbled and staggered for a moment before joining the others. He was unsure if he had even phased it. He twisted his body at the waist to avoid the jets of liquid fired from the tubes on the yellow creature’s bodies. He wasn’t sure what the stuff was, but Cameron couldn’t’ think of a single situation where he would want to get hit by that alien
bukkake
.

He squeezed the trigger on the ancient revolver and only got a soft click. Same on the second, but on his third try the bullet burst from the barrel into one of the creature’s eyes. The critter hit the sand and howled on its side. The creatures turned to look at their fallen comrade, but didn’t run to its aid since they certainly didn’t want to open themselves to Cameron.

The tip of his boot went into the sand, and he traced a symbol.

13

When he heard the footfalls, Ryoma spun around the corner and squeezed off three or five shots with the rail pistol. He wasn’t entirely sure since it didn’t make any noise and his trigger finger was very fast. Two of the bolts ricocheted off the armor with a ping. One clipped Ryoma’s shoulder, and the other went through his right hand. The rail pistol clattered the ground.

Ryoma raised the flintlock.
Come on! Let them at least feel this!
The hammer struck, but not the kind of flash he was used to seeing. At least not like the flash from the anti-matter annihilation. It was close to that of a standard gun’s bang. Not only did the flintlock have the same security system as the ship, but also in anyone else’s hand it was an authentically working flintlock pistol. In the meantime Ryoma had soiled himself. Not out of fear, but in the process he forgot to micromanage all of Cameron’s bodily functions.

Ryoma’s combat tactics in Cameron’s body were so bizarre that the Paladins hesitated in fighting back. If the Paladin in front, St. Germaine, had checked the sonic disruptor mounted on the gauntlet, he would have noticed a tiny lead ball lodged one of the coils that supply the power to the device’s amplifier. When he clenched his gauntlet to fire the weapon it exploded or rather the power supply in the gauntlet exploded when the coil charged. He was only left with a stump for the hand, but it had been centuries since he needed a physical body.

Ryoma took the moment of chaos to search Cameron’s memories for some tips. Things that quickly came to him were that the sonic disruptors on their gauntlets could easily knock him out at that range and could not be avoided since it was in fact a sound wave. A weapon also came to mind, a handheld graser. After the coming of lasers they were effective weapons, but pirates pined for the days when their opponents could bleed to death. To increase the risk of dying after being shot the pirates added gamma radiation to the laser. A handheld one couldn’t pierce the Paladins’ armor, but it could contaminate it.

Unfortunately Ryoma was not blessed with the knowledge of pulling one from thin air. He darted back into Cameron’s cabin and slammed the door. His ears started to ring and his balance was taken from him. The Paladins must be firing their weapons through the walls. Ryoma tried to will Cameron’s body to move again, but it wasn’t going anywhere. He guessed he wouldn’t be able to think either if he still had a physical brain. Cameron’s brain really didn’t have anything to add so he took that as a yes.

He popped his head out of Cameron’s body and glanced through the wall. He noted a blue aura flared around the Paladins. A whip of sky blue energy lashed around Ryoma’s neck and pulled. The pull was strong, but Ryoma’s will also was strong. He wasn’t budging, but he didn’t have enough slack to duck back into Cameron’s body. This didn’t last for long when three more of these lassos lashed around his neck.

“Wait hold up!” Ryoma cried. His feet were the only thing grasping to Cameron’s body now –a tenuous link at best to keep Cameron’s bodily functions running. “You’re going to kill him.” Suddenly a scream pierced the hallways, and the disease spirit stored across the hall jumped through the wall. The visage of a zombie Cameron named Xibulba slashed his claws against the Paladin armor. His teeth were stopped on the wards against spirits placed on the mechanical suits.

The psychic tethers weakened and snapped under Ryoma’s strain. The Paladins all focused on restraining Xibulba against the wall, but none of the psychic restraints could hold long. Of course none of the Paladins knew what they were actually fighting. Ryoma ducked back into Cameron’s body. The Paladin’s sonic weapons were no longer trained on him so control returned. He dabbed his finger into the blood trailing from his ears, a spell bubbled to the top of his brain, and he traced a symbol on the door.

14

Magic is all about intention. The rituals, gestures, sigils, chanting, incantations, and everything else are just psychodramas to create the mood to push that intention along. Symbols mean everything to the spiritual and on the Astral, but only in the context of the user. For example the symbol that both Cameron and Ryoma drew, some may know its significance and think “A squat sign. This building is probably teeming with feral hoboes.”

Now perhaps a homeless person spots this sign in the middle of a bitter winter. To them that squat sign identifies the building as a sanctuary. Symbols that are personal and unique have the greatest power, not someone else’s symbols found in a grimoire. The Urban Shaman taught Cameron much more about magic than Cameron would ever give him credit.

15

Inside his protective bubble Cameron could no longer see the deserts of this universe. He sighed in relief that he brought some power over reality with him. This would be short-lived as the outside of the sanctuary slowly dissolved along with the squat sign on the floor. And Cameron along with all that.

His breathing was deep, slow, and deliberate. He did not need air, but it calmed him down just the same. He was pressed for time and panic steadily gnawing away at him. He had to work carefully at finding the breach used to get into this Universe. If he rushed he may never find it, but he had no idea what he was looking for. No doubt, though, he would know it when he saw it.

But this Universe was dissolving him at an alarming rate. Patches of the sanctuary were wearing thin, and he could see out into the deserts again. Probably if the creatures knew what they were dealing with they might be able to breach it now. It was hard to tell how much time had passed – time flies when you’re in the Astral. Would the breach even be around here? Would he have to search the entire planet for it? The Universe?

He ran on instinct running his third eye over the spiritual landscape. Urgency tried to gnaw away at him, but he wouldn’t have it. As far as Cameron was concerned he had all the time in the world. It wasn’t going anywhere. He was.

His mind had roped off the area of the desert he was in as to where the weak spot must be according to his intuition. No matter how a magician may hide it they always leave their auras like fingerprints on them. Whatever he was looking for had the markings of Harvey or maybe even Lam on it, surely it would.

He had run out of area to look. The urgency was starting to break through his mental barriers of calmness. The top of the barrier dissipated and Cameron noticed the sky hanging over his head. He surveyed the landscape again. There had to be something there that was out of the ordinary.
The whole fucking thing is out of the ordinary.

While Cameron may think otherwise; any plan or idea he has that is truly inspired could only be coaxed out of him when things were down to the wire. Without the pressure the procrastinating ways of his old life would hold true. That said a thought occurred to him.
If everything were out of the ordinary, something familiar would stick out like a sore thumb.

His astral vision settled on a spot that he had looked over twice before right under his nose. It was unassuming and held no trace of Harvey or Lam, in fact, Cameron didn’t know whose aura was there but it was something from his Universe. There at the highest level of existence the edge of the Universe had an anomaly in it. It was far too young of a blemish to be a scar, only fifty years old. The mark was only a scab.

Finding the chink in this Universe’s armor did not fill Cameron with joy or relief, but with rage. This Harvey, the Man in Black, was a two-bit magician and he was pissed at himself for letting this happen. Harvey didn’t even create the breach to send Cameron to this Universe – he was using one that someone else made fifty years ago.

Cameron pulled the flintlock pistol from his belt. He raked his foot across the symbol on the floor, and the sanctuary fell down around him prematurely. He fired the flintlock not into the yellow monsters, but into the sky. A brilliant fireball arched into the sky and faded into the higher planes. This startled the creatures, but not into a retreat. A hasty attack instead. As they fired the liquid from their beaks, penises, or whatever; the antimatter annihilated the scab.