Ashlyn Chronicles 1: 2287 A.D. (9 page)

***

As the ebbing power of the fugue abated and their passions faded, so did Ashlyn’s image dissipate from beneath him. With her disappearance, he once again found himself afloat on the golden pathway. Backwards he traveled, away from the metaphysical reality until even the pathway itself disappeared.

His return to reality was stark, brutal. He was lonely as never before. He yearned to be enfolded within her arms.

From the moment he had awakened in the hospital, four days after his return from Denver, he had felt a growing need to be near her. For the next three days while Avenger was being readied, he had visited Ashlyn. Each time he hoped she would be awake. He had a million questions, but none of them was as important as the simple need to look into her eyes and hear her voice. Being in her presence made him feel complete.

Once Avenger was done prepping for battle and Project Terminus checked and double-checked for readiness, he had been forced to leave.

Now as he lay in his bed, gathering his breath, he contemplated all that had just happened. The disheveled bedding made for a convincing argument that it had been more than just a dream.

He dared to hope that Ashlyn had awakened.

***

To the sound of Renee’s faraway voice, Ashlyn returned to reality. Such was the depth of her longing for Steven that her heart ached for him. So powerful had been the melding of their two minds that she could still feel his lips upon hers.

Though he was somewhere in the depths of space, her search had confirmed that he was alive. How she would get to him or when she would meet him, she did not know. For now, she was content just knowing that he was alive, and on this day, there was nothing more important to her.

Her eyes slowly opened and she swiped the errant strands of hair from her face. “Hi there,” said Ashlyn with a soft, sexy, lingering lilt in her voice.

Renee retrieved the sheet from the floor and draped it over Ashlyn. “Do you know what just happened to you?” Renee looked around the room at the chaotically strewn debris.

“Not really,” Ashlyn said with an honest shrug.

Renee studied Gena’s data on the monitor beside Ashlyn’s bed. “My god, your heart was racing at 390 beats a minute. Yet—your vitals don’t show that you were under any harmful duress at all. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Renee with sincerity and excitement as she studied the graphs. “The levels of your brain activity are unprecedented. Your theta waves were spiking at levels Gena could barely measure. Same for your adrenal glands.”

Renee spotted an anomaly that alarmed her. “Gena, display frames 136 and 137. Decrease magnification to a 1 to 1 ratio.”

“Frames 136 and 137 are already at a 1 to 1 ratio,” came Gena’s reply.

“The readouts are amazing. Your pineal, hypothalamus, and pituitary glands are almost three times normal size. Not to mention, your EM field vibration levels are off the chart. So is your DMT level. In fact, everything is.”

“In layman’s terms?” asked Ashlyn.

“I think—you had an out-of-body experience. I have read a number of case studies about people who claim to have had them, traveling to distant places and other time periods. They say that by channeling the mind, they could create something akin to an inter-dimensional portal, but there has never been any hard, scientific evidence to support it. Not evidence like this anyway.”

“Do you think that’s what happened to me?” asked Ashlyn.

“Probably. These numbers are incredible! It’s just that yours was so interactive, so physical. It was like seeing two converged realities. Ashlyn, if I can be so candid, it appeared that you were with someone in the O.B.E? They were twisting you into a pretzel,” said Renee with a small, embarrassed laugh. “Do you know who it was?”

Ashlyn blushed.

“And I’m also curious about why it all started when you said aloud the name of the three stars in the belt of Orion. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the words triggered the event,” added Renee.

“Yeah, I guess an explanation might help,” said Ashlyn, smiling.

After picking up the overturned chair, Renee sat down, anxious to hear what Ashlyn had to say.

“The words were a planted, suggestive
trigger that Tynabo put into my genetics. It was only to be used in an emergency. Fifteen years of stasis seemed to qualify,” said Ashlyn, “Your answer is ‘no’. I don’t know who it was. I have never seen him before. I just wanted to find out if he was still alive. It hadn’t seemed likely with so few people left. All I know is that he was alone and that he had a lot of books in his room.”

“Books?” parroted Renee as she picked up a pillow from the floor and placed it under Ashlyn’s head. “There aren’t many men who read real books anymore.”

There was a strange moment of silence in the room. “By the way, my kids told me to give you something when you woke up. It’s their way of saying thank you for saving their father.” Renee opened a drawer in the wall and retrieved two crayon drawings for Ashlyn.

“I saved your husband? I don’t remember that.”

“It isn’t uncommon with the severity of the injuries you had. It is possible that you may remember in time, but yes, he took you out of stasis. Then—you saved him. He was frozen. The team radioed ahead, getting us ready to receive the injured. From the story they told, I expected you to be a three-hundred-pound linebacker. The story was astonishing!” Renee then handed the pictures to Ashlyn.

“How old are your kids?” asked Ashlyn.

“My son is eight, my daughter six.”

Ashlyn looked at the pictures and giggled. One picture was of a cow eating grass, the other, a woman with long black hair standing beside their father.

“That’s supposed to be you,” said Renee.

“The woman or the cow?” replied Ashlyn.

The two of them laughed.

“Renee, is your husband still here in the hospital? I would like to meet him. Thank him for finding me.”

“No—he left a couple of weeks back. Right now, he is aboard Avenger, in space. He’s the Fleet Admiral,” said Renee.

“Your husband is an admiral?” asked Ashlyn, her voice betraying recognition. Her heart leapt into her throat, her stomach knotting as she recalled the worn set of admiral’s bars on the nightstand.

“Yup, and he’s a book reader too.” Renee let out a loud notable sigh. “Steven—is the only person at Sea Base that still reads the old hardbound books. He collects them. It settles him. He likes to see it the way the author himself saw it.”

Ashlyn’s eyes grew large, her face inlaid with deep concern.

The moment Ashlyn uttered the word books—Renee knew.

“Steven was different after he came back. It was subtle. Probably no one but me noticed it, but he’d changed,” said Renee. “I compared your charts. The two of you share hundreds of similar genetic anomalies. I haven’t told anyone, not even Steven. I had been hoping that you were a relative of Steven’s, perhaps his sister. Obviously, with what just happened, I was wrong.” Though she hid it well from Ashlyn, her hands shook, her voice quavering.

“The only conclusion is that you are his genetically engineered mate. I guess it wasn’t coincidence that it was he who found you at the Children of Destiny Foundation, a genetics facility. It also explains why he had an almost obsessive compulsion to meet you. He came here several times each day, hoping you would awaken before he had to ship out. It’s not that he said anything, but his behavior spoke volumes.”

“Renee, I—,” Ashlyn had no idea what to say, just that she wanted to apologize.

“Let me finish. I know it’s not your fault, Ashlyn—nor Steven’s. In many ways, I actually should be saying thank you. When the team returned from Denver, Steven was brain dead. There was no activity at all. There was, literally, no reason to hope. Within hours, though, his brain activity had not only restarted, but its patterns had matched yours. The two of you were synched. Somehow, your energy saved him. He drew strength from you. A day later, you were both in stable condition. By day two, your readings were a thousand percent above normal. You were stronger together, more than you ever could have been alone. I ran tests—lots of them. I wanted to know how the two of you had survived. The results showed that your electrical fields are linked. You are, effectively, one person. It is the only explanation for why you both regenerated so fast. You are very special people.”

Renee stared intently at Ashlyn. “You even have his eyes. That strange combination of light silvery-blue.”

Renee turned and went to the cabinet behind her. Quietly retrieving a few items, she turned around to Ashlyn.

“Steven is actually the reason I came back to see you. I had forgotten to give you these. Steven wanted you to have them when you regained consciousness. He said it would ease your transition. Here you go. You were wearing this when they found you.”

“My locket.” Ashlyn took it and closed her fingers around it with a tender squeeze.

“And this. Steven said to tell you, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’”

“He’s right. It is. It belonged to Tynabo. He told me it had once belonged to Neil Armstrong.” Ashlyn read it aloud in a soft voice, “One Small Step for Man—One Giant Leap for Mankind.”

“And”—Renee handed Ashlyn the holo-player that Tynabo had left—“I haven’t seen what’s on it. I don’t think I want to. Steven was adamant that you see it, though.”

“Renee, I don’t know what to say.”

“For now, nothing. Get some rest. Tomorrow, we will talk. Deal?”

Ashlyn nodded and gave a small, narrow smile.

Renee saw past what should have been a natural enmity. “By the way, Ashlyn. Call me Ren. All my friends do.”

For the last seven weeks, Avenger had been lying in wait, hiding in the sun’s chromosphere—but all that changed two hours ago with the arrival of Enlil’s fleet.

As Steven had anticipated, the flagship held back, staying close to their jump point by the sun. The rest of the fleet, seventeen ships, headed to Earth using the Moon for cover. As the ships came to their closest point of approach, less than 30 kilometers from the Moon, Steven sprung the trap, activating Project Terminus.

Project Terminus was a bomb of incredible destructive power, set deep within the core of Earth’s Moon. The UN had placed it there decades before, and as President Tomlinson had said, it was a Hail Mary. There was no guarantee of survival. It was a last resort. The bomb was comprised of Helgenium, a rare stable super-heavy element, discovered less than a century earlier.

Enlil’s fleet was ill prepared for the massive strength of the blast or for the debris that pummeled them, overloading their shields. Within seconds
,
the enemy fleet was decimated.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Avenger launched a timed, coordinated attack upon the flagship.

Motivated by retribution, Enlil’s flagship had done the one thing that Steven hadn’t anticipated before she limped off, trying to escape.

Steven, an ordinarily unconquerable man with commanding eyes and broadly squared shoulders of leadership and strength, had melted into obscurity. In his place stood the mortal man, the husband, the father.

He stood stoically behind the shoulders of Avenger’s helmsmen, anxiously waiting, his eyes locked upon the forward view screen as his ship raced to catch the missile that streaked toward Earth.

His head pounded, his concentration faltering as he entered into yet another spike in the ebb and flow of the fugue, and he cursed himself for the bad timing. Like a fish caught on a hook, he struggled against the pull, always losing ground. Each day its grasp upon him tightened, dragging him deeper. Each night as he fell asleep, the fugue overtook him, whisking him away into a netherworld of dreams in which Ashlyn came to him.

***

As yet another large quake stilled and Ashlyn’s craft settled, a small alarm on her tactical display sounded, bringing attention to a blip on the screen.

Ashlyn sat on the rim of the trench, some four thousand meters above Sea Base. She saw that far outside the minefield’s protective grid and far from the numerous blips that represented the debris of Enlil’s destroyed fleet, a lone, red, flashing triangle approached Earth. Target 01M.

As a new pilot in training, they had given Ashlyn the simplest of duties. Each day, she took a shift monitoring the lasers, making sure they were always in a state of readiness for when the attack began. For Ashlyn, it was supposed to have been nothing more than the work of a sleepy-eyed night watchman. It was here that the myriad of little sea creatures, drawn to the laser’s resonant hum and eerie orange glow, could help distract her from her profoundly strong need to be with Steven.

Each night, the fugue brought them together. Each time, Ashlyn’s blood felt like it boiled—her mind and body focused upon the desperate need to possess him. The fugue was seeking a physical fulfillment, which had not come, and it often left her feeling faint and disoriented. Killer migraines had forced her into isolation, seeking out quiet, darkness, and solitude.

Forty minutes ago, all that changed. Now the three sequentially linked quad-lasers were protecting Sea Base from Earth’s exploded Moon.

Ashlyn cursed the bad timing as she felt a spike in the fugue. To help her focus, she let loose a guttural, gritty scream.

“Gena, how large is target 01M?”

“The Orbiter 3 satellite data shows target 01M is 12.2 meters in length and is fusion powered,” answered Gena.

As the spike peaked in strength, Ashlyn experienced bleeding. The images from within Steven’s mind told her all that she needed to know.

Without wasting precious seconds of time to transmit a message through her comm’s high-security encryption mode, she said, “Dog house? This is Lady Fox. Emergency response requested!”

No reply.

“Dog house, repeat. This is Lady Fox. Please respond!”

“Foxy Lady, your orders are to maintain radio silence!”

Ashlyn ignored the reprimand and the familiar wordplay of her call sign. “Sir, the order is obsolete. There is a missile, a planet killer, on its way to Earth. We need to intercept it!”

A long moment of silence passed before a familiar voice returned, “This is Commander Stratton. We are well aware of the situation. The laser will take care of the missile. Your request is denied.”

“Sir, the missile is a doomsday weapon. It will destroy Earth! And it’s going to circumvent the laser.”

“We have no evidence to support that.”

“Trust me. I have inside information. We need to do this.”

“Ashlyn, you were at the briefing a few weeks back. You know as well as I do that it is impossible to navigate through the hailstorm of falling debris. It’s suicide—and dammit, you are just too green to be considering this. Not to mention that it’s more than your life that you’re risking.”

“I’m not as green as you think, sir. I have fourteen-hundred hours logged in the air being trained by a team back at the Foundation. Either way, I am sorry, sir. I don’t have a choice!” said Ashlyn with finality. “We’re out of time. This is bigger than me, or the others that I’m putting at risk. It’s the needs of many.” Ashlyn knew that Stratton was one of the few people aware of the fact that by risking her own life, she was also risking Steven’s.

He heard her comm go silent as she cut communications. “Ash!” Stratton pounded his fist on the console, his concern for her and Steven evident. “Son-of-a-bitch!”

“Lady Fox, preparing for surface flight. Watchdogs, shield your intakes. I’m powering up,” she announced over her ship-to-ship channel. “Gena, retract robotic arms. Run a check of all systems in preparation for air-flight. Executive priority one status to be given to maintaining full atmospheric pressure and cockpit hull integrity at their current levels.”

Her Sharkfin’s robotic arms retracted and the ship’s folded wings lowered in preparation for take-off. Outside, her Sharkfin’s flaps waved as Gena ran a quick diagnostic of the flight systems, calibrating them for optimal performance.

“Parker, the shields aren’t designed to deflect large debris. Stratton’s right, it is suicide!” said Jackson sitting in the Sharkfin fifteen meters to Ashlyn’s right.

“It’s true that they aren’t designed for it, but the simulator runs I’ve made show that they will hold for a few minutes. I just have to avoid the big ones. It’ll be enough! It has to be!”

With her ship’s systems flashing readiness, Ash toggled
on
the external floods. The curious menagerie of strange creatures that were swimming lazily about her craft darted away into the darkness. Flipping the green, yellow, and red toggles to her left, she began the energy buildup to ignite the three main fusion reactors. “Gena, bring the secondaries on line. Maintain monitoring and sync flow for maximum output.” With a gentle pull on the yoke, her Sharkfin lifted without a sound off the bottom. As her craft spun around, turning its backside to the laser, a heavy cloud of silt roiled off the ocean floor.

Seconds passed. “Laser safety perimeter cleared,” announced Gena.

“Bring the mains on line.” The mains ignited and with a light push on the throttle Ashlyn’s fighter darted ahead, away from the shimmering, orange water and into a blackness that was deeper than the darkest night.

“Gena, at full throttle, what’s our time to maximum targeting range?”

“Approximately four minutes and thirty-five seconds,” came the instant reply.

“Time until the missile enters the atmosphere?” Ashlyn asked.

“Five minutes and forty seconds.”

“Sea Base, this is Jackson. I’m going with Foxy Lady. She needs a wing-man!” he said while punching his Sharkfin’s thrusters.

Overhearing his call, Ash eased up on the throttle. A glance at her radar screen told her that he was coming up fast on her port side. Pulling alongside, he flashed his port-floods.

“Guess I’m not the smartest monkey in the zoo,” said Jackson over the ship-to-ship comm.

“Maybe, but I think Darwin would be awfully proud of his little primate right now,” said Ashlyn, just as a series of strong jolts jostled both their craft. “Thanks, Jackson. Glad to have the company. Hold onto your hat. Topside readouts show the wind shears are topping 830 knots. It’s going to be gut-wrenching. Prepare for air-flight in 4—3—2—1—,” said Ashlyn.

The two fighters burst from the ocean into a world of charcoal gray plumage and thickly churning clouds of tornadic waterspouts, hail, and lightning. The sight was dark and foreboding.

In bold contrast, the lasers below were giving them a spectacular sendoff, pulverizing red, orange, yellow, and sometimes blue-green meteors far above them. It was a fireworks display befitting Zeus.

The lasers garnered their energy from a set of massive cold-fusion thermal reactors, which sat atop nearly thirteen square kilometers of deeply cored thermal vents, twenty-six kilometers south of Sea Base. Originally, each of the three quad-laser units had been attached to a Claw, a giant computerized mobile tractor and self-contained refinery. The automated platforms wandered the ocean floor in search of raw minerals to be used in the building, construction, and continued maintenance of the underwater colony.

For the last fourteen years, however, they had sat in silence waiting for the day when they would protect the Challenger Deep Sea Base from the after-effects of Project Terminus.

“You were right. Average wind velocity is 450 knots up here, and I’m showing shears of nearly double that,” said Jackson in amazement. “The Moon’s explosion sure stirred up the hornet’s nest.”

Jackson’s words were a superlative understatement. Before the orbiting cameras had gone off-line, everyone at Sea Base had stared in stunned silence, marveling at the sheer immensity of the explosion that had inundated the ships of the enemy fleet.

“All right, kill your floods. Set your shields to maximum power, auto-heat compensation. We’ll maintain a—” Ashlyn’s voice broke off as she took note of a low, rumbling sound. Glancing to her right, she saw a massive wall of water racing across the ocean’s surface toward them. “Jackson, disengage your safety protocols and go to full boost, now! Roll 40 degrees to port,” screamed Ashlyn over the comm.

Jackson disengaged the safety and hit the boosters as Ashlyn had ordered. The alarm in her voice was damned scary.

The two fighters had exited the ocean from deep within a trough of towering walls of water and it was going to be close—very close.

“Hot-diggity-damn! Now that’s a tidal wave,” said Jackson.

To their right, less than fifteen hundred meters away, was a mountainous wave racing toward them at hundreds of kilometers per hour.

With the safety protocols removed, the fighters pushed deep into the redline limits of their engines. The engines roared as flames shot more than a hundred meters behind them. The wave grew closer with each passing millisecond. The curling edge of the wave loomed above Ashlyn like the blade of a sharpened sickle ready to strike.

Ashlyn’s genetically enhanced abilities kicked in, perceptually slowing time and the speed of movement of everything around her. To her right, she watched the warm, orange, glowing reflections of the laser bursts. They filled the sky as the wave twisted and distorted them into a kaleidoscope of unearthly apparitions. She found it to be as intriguing as it was beautiful.

A light, airy, frothy foam that led the overhanging curl of the wave pelted her shields, belying the power that pushed it along. As Ashlyn cut through the foam, just escaping the curl, flying in her wake like a whale calf following its mother’s lead, was Jackson. His engine sputtered as his fighter cut through the froth and then came back to full power as his craft burst into the clear. The body of the wave cut across his trailing wash just inches below the wing and the tail-mounted engines.