Charger the Soldier (33 page)

Frustrated, Andy motioned for the transport
to lift off without him as he gathered up his belongings and walked
back down the ramp to the building below. This was the research lab
constructed just outside the now protected forest and grassland
area. Here the researchers were able to work without contaminating
the three sites.

Teams had been searching the Egyptian desert
for almost a year, with no success in finding the third site's
entrance. This young researcher claiming to find a circle in one of
the roughly documented ancient forests defied logic.

"Here, on this map, we found the stone rings
here," the young researcher said as he pointed to a location on a
map laid across the table the researchers used for eating
lunch.

"And you're sure of this? Because my missing
the committee's monthly meeting will surely get me fired." Andy
wanted to emphasize his predicament.

"Positive! We have a skidder parked outside,
and we can be at the circle in a little over an hour if we leave
now." The young researcher was bubbling with confidence.

The road through the ancient forest to the
circle was cut carefully, with many twists and turns to protect a
great many sensitive areas. However, after a little more than an
hour, the two men stood at the parking area a short walk from the
circle's location.

"Lucy, the lead scientist, is waiting for us
at the circle. She has the entire area restricted and sectioned
off," the young researcher said, as the two walked with bags of
heavy gear slung over their backs.

"Not Lucky Lucy?" Andy asked. He could barely
stand being in that woman's presence. To Andy, Lucy was a
dilettante, a rich kid from an arrogant family. How she had ever
earned a degree was a mystery.

"One and the same," the researcher replied
and then ducked as Andy started to rant.

The two men emerged from the forest and stood
in a small clearing as Andy continued to vent. "Then she claimed to
have found a vital clue to the location of the power source for the
British site when, in fact, she had located the kitchen facility.
The damn power source entrance was two levels down. I doubt Lucy
even knows the difference between a circle and a square!" Andy was
feeling frustrated and sure this trip was a waste of time and that
by missing the committee meeting he was surely going to lose his
job.

Lucy had walked into the clearing behind the
two men and heard the entire conversation. "To be fair," she said
coolly, "the only reason I missed the entrance was because your
team had confused meters with feet again." She was a big woman,
well over six feet in height and had fiery red hair that looked
like she rarely combed it. "Back here is where I found the circle."
She motioned for the two men to follow as she returned to the
forested area.

There, after a moment's walk, Andy stood
staring in disbelief at a stone circle. The circle was
approximately two feet across and consisted of six or seven fist
sized rocks buried haphazardly in the dirt.

"You, I am going to have fired!" Andy growled
at the young researcher, "and you, I am going to kill!" Andy turned
a furious gaze on Lucy.

Lucy calmly pointed just beyond the small
stone circle. There in the brush, barely visible, stood a full
stone replica of Stonehenge. Time and vegetation had taken their
toll on the stones, but they were still legible, and inscribed on
the face of each rock was the ancient writings of the Enoch.

"It's on the small stones, near the center,
that I found the correct location of the Egyptian entrance," Lucy
added smugly.

Andy stood dumbstruck, trying to find a way
to apologize and to reconcile the discovery of these immense
stones. "Well, when I'm wrong, I'm really wrong," Andy offered as
he scratched the top of his head.

"I put the entrance about ten yards south of
the team's present location. That's where it should be found," Lucy
added.

Andy immediately grabbed his satellite
communications device and relayed the news to the Egyptian dig
team.

It didn't take long for the return message.
Sure enough, the new location revealed the entrance.

Andy spent the better part of that day
conversing with the seven scientists now excavating in the correct
location in Egypt, as he studied in ever greater detail all the
markings Lucy was pointing out on the stones she had
discovered.

"I have to admit your work here is very
impressive, and I have badly misjudged you." Andy said to Lucy.

Lucy ignored the compliment, instead focusing
on revealing more markings in other areas she had discovered.

Suddenly, over the communications device,
shouting and other sounds of chaos rang out from the Egyptian team.
Andy asked the team what was happening and the reply he received
was both frantic and jumbled. All he and Lucy could make out was,
"Run…" and cursing mixed with the words, "some type of creature
appeared!"

Then came horrific screams of pain, then a
sharp crack, and the communications device went dead.

As if that were not enough, the three
scientists standing in the ring of stones then witnessed a most
remarkable event, one that would never be repeated.

T
he entire event had been recorded by both satellites
and nearby seismic sensors. Andy stared at his communicator in
disbelief, trying to make sense of what he had just witnessed.

Lucy said, "My god, what the hell happened
there?"

"I have no idea," Andy replied. The three
stood in silence in the newly risen forest of the First Ones, and
watched, astonished, as the replica of Stonehenge they had
discovered glowed blue for a moment, then dimmed and faded away.
The link with the fifth dimension was thus shattered and would
never be rediscovered.

Several days of confusion followed. The
knowledge that Charger had attacked scientists and innocent
civilians at the dig in Egypt was intolerable. This beast who had
appeared out of thin air and created a total disaster was something
that must be dealt with. His attack served as an impetus to
humanity's desire to have all the Hyborgs destroyed. General Harris
hatched a scheme to have Charger himself remove all the Lycans and
Hyborgs from existence, but he decided not to implement the plan
until later.

Right now, humanity had a larger problem to
deal with. The forest domes of the Enoch contained all the plants
and animals a starving and dysfunctional world needed. As lead
scientist in full command of the projects, Andy thought the domes
needed a protector, and reluctantly decided that Lucy was the best
qualified. Lucy and her grad students were given full authority for
the protection of the forests and the use of the forest products in
rejuvenating a war-ravaged world. They were enjoined to do so
carefully.

What started as a gift from humanity's
distant ancestors and arrived at Earth's hour of greatest need soon
degraded into chaos and calamity. The largest problem was the
location of the domes. The Enoch had had no way of knowing that
Dhuusamareeb, Somalia, would one day turn out to be the worst
location on Earth.

A country mired in brutal repressions and
organized crime now held the best source of food for a starving
population. The country's provisional government, formed after the
war ended, claimed that they owned the domes, and they would only
hand out the food and plants to those countries that had the
capital to purchase them.

One man had the backbone to say no, to say
that those who remained on Earth had to put their old hatreds aside
and start working together. This voice who rallied the world, and
forced dissenters to step aside for the betterment of all the
peoples of Earth, was Danny Opinhimmer. He was truly a president
for a new world, a native American Indian kid from a small town who
would destroy borders and, with the limited remaining population of
Earth, create a single world government. Danny supported Lucy and
her love for the great, ancient forests and confirmed that she was
the protector of these remarkable oases of green. To appreciate the
majesty of these forests with their exotic plants and ancient
animals, one had only to look around at the remainder of the
world.

The invasion had destroyed all but a few
regions on planet Earth, and these were stretched to their limits
to support the survivors, including those that returned from the
frozen poles. The incredible goodwill of the Inuit of the north and
the research scientists of the south saved the lives of countless
humans, and now those survivors needed to recuperate and regain
their strength. They naturally turned to the exotic, ancient tracts
with their staggering beauty, rich grasslands, incredibly tall
trees, and robust wildlife as a means to that end.

Only Lucy, who daily drove or walked through
the forests and across the savannas of healthy, waving grasses,
knew just how rich the areas were in life. She often glimpsed
hedgehogs, skinks, and civet-like creatures on the prowl.
Occasionally, a hartebeest, which looked like a precursor to the
modern antelope, would raise its head above the grass and give her
a long look from large, liquid, brown eyes. And, of course, where
the hartebeest roamed, so did the red jackal, though it rarely let
itself be seen. She sometimes glimpsed the enormous ears of African
elephants browsing among the trees and heard the snarling roar of
saber-tooth cats arguing over kills.

Snakes abounded, and Lucy was forever seeing
new and different varieties, grateful that she felt no aversion to
these reptiles. Larks, warblers, and bush shrikes flitted
everywhere in search of insect meals.

Among the palms, she sometimes found shea
trees and tasted their tart but nutritious fruit, as she marked
their location on her charts. Their big, oil-rich seeds would be
valuable both as food and medication. Acacia, or thorn trees, were
everywhere and sometimes she came across a big baobab tree,
indicating that this area had evolved from semi-desert, for the
baobab stores water in its immense trunk against the dry
seasons.

She could have wandered the clean, verdant
areas all day, but her duties as protector were heavy. She was
often heard complaining about the apparently constant need of
survivors to consume everything in their path. This stupidity would
destroy the gift of the Enoch. To secure and maintain an ecosystem
three hundred miles across was difficult at best and, at worst, it
was a vulnerable garden waiting to be raided. Outdated warlords, a
remnant of the past and an ideological throwback to the Stone Age,
were determined to control this once tribal area, intending to get
rich no matter what the cost to other survivors in a devastated
world.

Lucy was not about to let this happen, so she
had massive walls erected around the forests to protect the gardens
and the produce grown. Time and again the warlords, desperate to
tear down the walls they felt did not belong on their tribal lands,
encouraged people to commit acts of suicide. What Lucy could never
make these people understand was that tribal lands no longer
existed. People might still cling to the ideologies of times long
past, but the traditions of property ownership had to take a back
seat to survival.

A final act perpetrated by the local chiefs
of Somalia led to the deaths of hundreds of simple, ancient, tribal
people. They chose to tunnel under the wall. The damage to the
ecosystem was devastating. Plants were torn from the ground and
diesel fuel poured on the remaining plants, then ignited, forcing
Lucy to act. She installed computerized gun batteries around the
three domes. The guns automatically killed anything that got close
without proper authorization.

"I just don't understand! We feed them with
what we grow here in the same proportions as the rest of the world,
and they still demand more! Are they insane? Do they not grasp the
desperate conditions the world is facing?"

Lucy was beside herself with rage. She had
just witnessed another young life taken by the guns. "That's the
third kid this week. They will never get close but still they try!
The stupidity of this whole situation is that these kids are not
starving. Their remains prove they were well fed and healthy." She
spoke from the head chair of the conference room located inside
dome Alpha. Her colleagues sat in attendance, listening and taking
notes.

The three domes had been labeled Alpha, Beta,
and Omega. It was Omega that had been burned badly during the last
raid, and now the walls there were being constructed to go downward
into the ground just as far as they went upward.

"Jane, what's the situation on Beta? Are the
seedlings taking root in the soils of North America?" Lucy asked
after she finished her rant.

After the war that devastated Earth and after
Danny had been elected to the presidency of the world, the planet
had been divided into five districts. North and South America,
Eurasia, Africa, and Outlands, which was basically any area not
connected with the four big continents. Each district was run by a
prime minister who reported to the president. All these places
relied on the three domes for crop seeds to be planted in areas
being recovered after the invasion, a most arduous task.

"We have had incredible success in reseeding
the northern continent, but less success in the south," Jane
replied. She was a short woman, but her personality gave the
impression that she was as tall as Lucy, over six feet. "The armies
in the north ensured a better survival of the soil, but the south
was overrun so quickly that the soils there may take several years
to recover."

When Jane finished, Lucy turned to her scribe
and said, "Take a note. We have to redouble efforts on the Maven
program if we hope to succeed in the South. I'm guessing the
remaining districts are still on track?" Several people nodded
their agreement, and soon the meeting adjourned.