The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption (18 page)

As the Ursan ship was in no condition to take
me home to Earth, Captain Gil Pesci kindly offered me one of the
Glieser warship’s shuttles for my return to Terra Firma, as long as
I promised to send it back immediately on autopilot. Yes, sir!

It was actually kind of fun to wend my way
home in a vessel resembling a sting-ray. I yielded to the impulse
once or twice to guide the ship through some smooth flips and turns
as I glided through the ether. I gave a silent thanks to Captain
Gil for his loan, and to T’fal for her ka’vyr skills that had
allowed me to survive Glieser interrogation without revealing what
had happened with the Ursans and the strange small man on
HDWhatever. I’d half expected Agriarctos to reappear and cheruklize
me again, but my furry partner in treasure hunting seemed to be
gone for good. I resolved to keep my Ergal within arm’s reach in
the future, just in case.

* * *

Hollywood—present day

Spud should be grateful I didn’t shoot his
head off. He M-fanned in the bathroom of my Malibu house soon after
I’d arrived—as I was taking a relaxing bubble bath. I
invisible-ized my stun gun and sunk deeper into the tub, only my
head sticking out of the bubbles.

“Don’t you ever knock?” I asked,
irritated.

“You said it was urgent,” he shrugged,
putting down the toilet cover and sitting on it next to me. “Here I
am.”

“That’s for sure,” I rolled my eyes. “You
smell like a chimney.”

“I have been cogitating …”

I held out a hand quickly. “I don’t want to
know.” I looked at him with a satisfied smile. “Somalderis.”

An eyebrow went up. “Pardon?”

“The MacGuffin. Somalderis, that’s what it’s
called.”

“Ah.” The eyebrow went down. “I had begun to
fear it might be the Philosopher’s Stone.” He added, “Sorcerer’s
Stone, for you Yanks.”

I threw a wad of bubbles at him—and
missed.

He laughed. “So what is it?”

“I’m not quite sure,” I admitted. “Agriarctos
said it was some kind of membrane that could take you to another
world.”

I expected the next question to be, “Who’s
Agriarctos?”

Instead, it was, “Did he say membrane, or
M-brane?”

I shrugged. “I don’t honestly remember. What
difference does it make?”

Spud was looking off at the corner, lost in
thought. He mumbled, “All the difference in the worlds …”

* * *

Spud had me go over and over the last day’s
events, and continued to interrupt me with peculiar questions about
the most insignificant details. Finally, he sat back and said, “It
is time.”

I entirely agreed. My skin was so pruny I
looked like a ghost. I kicked him out of the bathroom while I
rinsed off and got “decent”. An hour later, Spud and I sat over a
pot of tea on my patio and made our plans. He pulled out his Ergal
and I craned my neck to look at the map on his mega’ed screen.

“The Black Sea was called the Euxeinos by the
ancient Greeks. West of its waters you could find the Greek cities
of Chersonesos and Pantikapaeon. East of its waters lay ‘the edge
of the Earth’ as the Hellenes called it, the kingdom of Kolhis in
what is now the Republic of Georgia.

“Mythological databases describe ancient
stories that say that’s where the Somalderis was hung on an oak
tree as a sacrifice to Ares.”

“Aries the Ram?”

“Ares, the god of War. Mars.”

I looked at Spud. “What do the Zygfed History
records say?”

Spud shook his head. “Unfortunately, there’s
nothing. Not one thing in the Zygint data bases or directories
about a Somalderis, or anything where it relates to Mars
either.”

“Okay. God of War. Certainly fits with
Benedict’s tactics.”

“In Greek mythology, King Athamas’ son
Phrixos escaped across the Euxeinos Sea to Kolhis on the back of a
winged ram—”

“Aha!” I chided. “I said ‘the ram’.”

Spud ignored me. “He sacrificed the ram skin
to”—he said pointedly—“Ares the War god and hung the fleece where
it was guarded by a dragon until Jason—”

“Fleece?!” I shouted, practically knocking
Spud out of his chair. “Fleece?!” My expression was pained. “The
Golden
Fleece?!”

“Well, yes, but—,” Spud stumbled.

I sat back in my chair and threw up my hands.
“Oh, great! I’ve been on a wild goose chase for the Golden
Fleece!”

“No,” Spud said, wiping my spit off his face.
“I don’t know that it’s really golden. The word in the
proto-Indo-European language might have meant light or sun—”

“Okay,” I sighed, “I give up.”
Proto-Indo-European language.
Really
. “So now we have to go
back to … 5000 BC and try to find it before Jason and the
Argonauts—or Agriarctos and the Ursans.”

“More like 500 BC.” Spud ventured. “And I’m
not sure Kolhis is where we’ll find the fleece any more. However, I
do believe it is a good place to start.”

Spud micro-ed his Ergal screen and went to
put the phone back in his pocket. I shot my hand out and grabbed
his arm.

“Wait. What about the temporal vector
shield?” Would we need another Trojan horse to get into Earth’s
past? Technology was Eikhus’s specialty, and I’m sure Spud wasn’t
eager to dive back into Kharybdian waters quite so soon and ask for
Eikhus’s help once again.

“I’m scanning—no, we’re clear,” Spud looked
relieved. “The shield doesn’t extend that far back in time. It’s
only covering the period of Yeshua’s recorded life, which was much
later. So, looks like it’s just you, me, and the Ram, Rush.” He got
a sly grin and added brightly, “The game is ahoof!”

I don’t think Spud was permanently
injured.

* * *

The Black Sea—578 BCE

Pantikapaeon was a beautiful city for its day.
Gleaming marble temples, rolling hills overlooking deep blue waters
and clear azure skies. Kind of like Baja California before they
built all the tourist hotels.

We M-fanned on the edge of town in 578 BCE,
as the intrepid brothers Akbar and Danel, or, as we were now
called, Aristotelis and Dimitris. Though I normally liked to wear
jeans or other pants—excuse me, Spud, trousers—I was actually
getting used to these togas. Commandos going commando, I
giggled.

“Don’t giggle,” Spud scolded, as we ambled
towards the beach. “Or I shall start calling you Dimitra.”

“Perilypos,” I apologized in ancient Greek,
or rather my Ergal helped me say. Uploads can only go so far, and I
hadn’t had much of a chance to practice dead languages living in
modern L.A..

We neared a row of boats bobbing in the water
a few feet off shore. Bronzed-skin fishermen were gathering twine
nets filled with flopping fish and pulling them onto the sand. I
flashed back to the Gliesers for a frightening second and felt
myself shivering.

Spud had engaged one of the fishermen in a
spirited conversation in fluent ancient Greek. He’s always got to
show me up. Darn those British public schools and their Classics
classes.

Thanks to Spud’s linguistic and diplomatic
skills, as well as a large sac of Ergaled drachmas, we soon found
ourselves in a borrowed wooden fishing boat riding the choppy waves
with the sun on our backs. Before long, my arms were aching from
pulling the oars, and trying to keep up with Spud’s semi-pro rowing
stride. Darn those British public schools and their rowing
clubs.

As soon as we were a speck on the horizon, I
mutinied. “We’re levving this thing the rest of the way,” I
insisted. “Why can’t we just Ergal to this Kolhis anyway?”

Spud didn’t answer immediately. He kept
scanning the water and raising a hand to the wind. “Because I want
to see,” he finally said, “where our dinghy naturally takes us. If
my calculations are correct, the currents and weather conditions
should mimic those described in Apollonius’s poem.” He looked at
me, and sighed. “The Argonautica—the story of Jason and the
Argonauts. Now row.”

I made a face and grudgingly picked up my
oars, adding with little enthusiasm, “Aye, aye, Captain Bligh.”

* * *

Many, many hours later, we made landfall on a
rocky beach battered by small waves. I found a shady spot under an
oak tree on a clump of moss to sit and rest my weary arms. I didn’t
know what Spud was going do next. There seemed to be a veritable
forest of oak trees around us, none of which sported a hanging
ram’s pelt Somalderis.

Spud wandered carefully from tree to tree,
his Ergal out and measuring something. I closed my eyes and waited.
Spud would tell me soon enough what was on his rather arcane
mind.

“Aliens!”

I jumped, opening my eyes and reaching for my
Ergal. Spud was nowhere to be seen.

“Aliens!” The voice belonged to a tall,
brawny man, who stood at my feet aiming a large bronze spear at my
chest.

My Ergal CANDI’d me that it was translating
Georgian. A fleeting Sarion joke about Southern accents crossed my
mind, but my groan was blocked by the gravity of my
predicament.

“Not alien. Human,” I said in Georgian,
thanks to my Ergal. “Greek.”

“Greek. Persian. All of you are invaders of
our kingdom! You must die!”

Ah, I like a guy who gets to the point right
away.

“Um,” I raised my hands, “I mean you no harm.
I am, uh, a simple fisherman who was shipwrecked and wants to
return home. With your mercy.”

I must not have been very convincing. The
Georgian slid the tip of his spear over my chest along the surface
of my toga. “Tell your soldiers that if they set foot here we will
skin alive every last man and hang them from the trees.”

Common practice around here, huh? You haven’t
seen a fleece hanging—

Crack
! Like a tall tree felled by
loggers, the Georgian fell stiffly to one side, barely missing my
legs. Behind him stood Spud and his trusty stun gun. Spud walked
over to the guard and Ergaled an E-shield around him so that we
could speak freely.

“Where were you?” I asked in modern English,
an edge to my voice. I scanned the trees, wary of additional
Georgians ready to attack us.

“We’re alone,” Spud reassured me. “Well, sort
of. If you ignore the portal.”

“The portal,” I said with a note of sarcasm.
“Go on.”

“There’s a gateway between two trees thirty
meters into the woods.”

“A wormhole?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I was able
to Ergal into something for a second or two, but I was ejected.
Perhaps one needs the fleece.”

My curiosity was aroused. I nodded at the
stunned guard. “Let’s leave Brutus here to rest and go check it
out.”

We walked over to the site. I saw nothing
more than a clearing filled with waist-high robust weeds. Spud
suggested I check my Ergal—it was documenting some space-time
distortion that it couldn’t identify.

“Think we should try it?” I ventured with
some eagerness.

Spud was enthusiastic. “Yes, maybe with two
of us and two Ergals we can push in farther than I was able to do
alone.”

I smiled gamely, hoping for the best. Holding
hands, Spud and I tried simultaneously X-fanning through the
portal. 1-2-3—

I felt my body being torn apart and didn’t
even have the energy to scream. Spud’s hand floated by my eyes and
disappeared, still grasping mine. I saw the skin of my leg unfold
and dissolve into a sparkle of light, then watched my eyes leave my
head and disperse into a shower of glitter. My brain slowly
absorbed that, without lungs, nose, or mouth, I was unable to
breathe, before it dissipated and I felt nothing but…

Hard ground. Gasping. Grabbing for each
breath with the desperation of a drowning man. Next to me. Gulping
breaths. Spud.

We lay together, still holding hands, for
quite a few minutes, before I could eke out a, “What the hell was
that?”

“I suspect it was Gary’s—and
Benedict’s—‘Level Three’,” Spud responded quietly, still panting.
“But I expect it is more like ‘Brane 5’.”

“English, please …”

“Think of it as another dimension.
With
another dimension.”

I sat up slowly, still shaking, and furrowed
my brow. “Well, we normally exist in four dimensions, right?
Height, length, width, plus time. So you mean Brane 5 is a place
with five dimensions?”

Spud nodded. “The Miletic Theory you were
supposed to have learned in your exocosmology uploads, postulates
at least eleven dimensions in which strings and membranes form the
basic components of each universe. I think our portal here takes
you into one of them, but, for reasons I have not yet been able to
figure out, only the Somalderis can keep you there.”

I lay back on the cool ground, breathing
deeply. “Wow.” I rolled on my side, frowning. “You think Benedict
and his gang want to be able to access those dimensions?”

Spud nodded again. “That’s my hypothesis. And
I presume that the Omega Archon wants to make sure that doesn’t
happen … again.”

Chapter 12

Ion Eyes

Earth Core—present day

We levved the dinghy back to Pantikapaeon
soon after nightfall, so that the kind and greedy fisherman would
have his boat by morning. We also timed the removal of the Georgian
sentry’s stun and E-shield to occur at the same time as our X-fan.
We didn’t want any, uh, hard feelings. In fact, Spud Ergaled an
almost-empty bottle of Chersonesan wine next to the guard before we
left so that the Georgian might have a straw to grasp after he woke
up and wondered why he’d spent the last few hours lying literally
senseless in the forest.

Our next stop was Earth Core, in the modern
era. It was time to talk to Gary again about what we’d
discovered.

“Gary isn’t heerrre,” Fydra responded at
reception, her tone professional.

I leaned over and handed her a bright,
studded necklace I had seen on one of the models at the wrap party
and Ergaled on my way down the elevator from Heck. “Happy
Birrrthday!”