Beyond the Shroud of the Universe Read online

  “And you’ve been impersonating him ever since?”

  “Indeed.” He chuckled. “People were amazed at how quickly I advanced as an Eco Warrior. With several hundred years’ of nanobot experience at that point, advancement was trivial; I had to intentionally make mistakes so I wouldn’t be found out.”

  As they topped a hill, Calvin looked down to see a ship sitting in the valley. Although the ship was bigger than the space fighter Calvin flew, it was much smaller than a combatant. The ship’s silver skin was shapely, and it was obviously intended for atmospheric flight. “What is that?” Calvin asked.

  “It’s my ship,” Nightsong replied. “We’re going to go for a ride.”

  As they started moving toward the ship, Father Zuhlsdorf spasmed out of Calvin’s grasp, then collapsed and lay groaning on the ground. Before Calvin could do anything, there was a flash as Nightsong shot the priest with his laser pistol. Father Zuhlsdorf stilled, his last breath escaping as a sigh.

  “What the hell did you do that for?”

  “He was extraneous to my plans now that I finally have you,” Nightsong said. He motioned toward the ship with his pistol. “Now shut up and get going.”

  Fredensborg, Denmark, October 2, 2021

  Night held up one finger to Master Chief as he passed along a status report to their superiors. It was a report Master Chief was happy he didn’t have to make.

  “Okay,” Master Chief said, his eyes sweeping across the platoon. “We jump in one minute.” “Is everyone suited up and ready to go kill some liz—” Master Chief interrupted himself as his eyes stopped on Bob and Doug, two of the reptilian Kuji from Domus. Thinking back, he remembered an earlier “let’s go kill some lizards” comment, too.

  “Umm…,” Master Chief said. “When I was talking about killing lizards, you know I didn’t mean you two, right?”

  “Why would we think that?” Bob asked. “We’re people, not lizards. How would your comment apply to us?”

  “Uh, right,” stammered Master Chief, at a loss for words for one of the few times in his life, “that’s what I meant.” His gaze moved back to the rest of the platoon. “All right; gear up! We leave in one minute.”

  Bob looked at Doug and twitched an ear, the equivalent of a shrug for a race that didn’t have shoulders.

  “Humans,” Doug said in his native tongue, as if that explained everything. Bob nodded. In this case, it did.

  Anti-Denmark, Anti-Earth, Unknown Date

  “What are we waiting for?” Calvin asked.

  “Are you in a hurry?” Nightsong asked. He nodded to the handcuffs chaining the Terran to the co-pilot’s seat. “Relax. It doesn’t look like you’re going anywhere.” He chuckled, then added, “Don’t worry; you won’t have to wait long.”

  Calvin looked back out at the landscape, hoping to see one of his friends. He tried calling the platoon on his comm, but there was no reply. While he was distracted, Nightsong reached over and touched him on the cheek. Calvin’s face burned with the contact. “What was that?” he asked.

  “Those were some nanobots of mine. If you get more than 25 feet from me, they will stop your heart. Also, if I should happen to die, you will die too. Just a little precaution in case you decide to try something foolish.” He smiled. “Oh, yeah, I also turned off your implant’s ability to transmit and receive, so you needn’t bother trying to contact your friends.”

  Calvin glared at the Aesir, too frustrated to come up with a response.

  Nightsong looked at his watch. “Five seconds,” he said. He looked out the canopy as a rumble was felt throughout the ship, and a large section of land lifted a mile away, turning into a massive fireball.

  “That’s what I was waiting for,” Nightsong said. “I just wanted to make sure your friends have an interesting welcome when they come looking for us.”

  “Bastard,” Calvin spat.

  “No, just cautious,” Nightsong replied, unperturbed. “Speaking of which…” He turned a dial on the instrument panel and pulled the boom microphone down from his headset. “Base, this is Faery,” he transmitted. Although Nightsong spoke in Farsi, Calvin’s implant was able to translate, as he had received a download of all the common Terran languages. “I’ve delayed them all I can. You need to execute Plan Tempest.”

  “But we are not ready,” a voice replied from a speaker, also in Farsi.

  “If you do not do it now,” Nightsong said, “the Americans and their allies will be here to talk with the Efreet soon, and you do not want that.” After a moment, he added, “Do what you do best. Bluff.”

  “You leave us no choice,” the voice said. “We will move forward with the plan. Make no mistake, though; we are not bluffing.”

  Nightsong looked over to Calvin. “The scary thing is, he really isn’t bluffing.” Nightsong shrugged. “And they call me crazy.”

  “You’re never going to get away with this…,” Calvin said. “…no matter what this is. Night will come for you. He will never give up.”

  Nightsong smiled at Calvin, then looked back out of the cockpit. “I rather doubt he will come after us,” the Aesir said as he pulled back on the control stick. The ship leapt from the ground and soared skyward. “Even if he somehow survives his entry into this universe, I think he is going to be rather busy with other things very soon.”

  Chapter Six

  Fredensborg, Denmark, October 2, 2021

  “Ready,” Master Chief said, reaching over to make skin-to-skin contact with Staff Sergeant Alka Zoromski.

  “Me too,” Night said, putting his free hand on the staff sergeant’s.

  “Here goes nothing,” Zoromski said. He pushed the ‘transfer’ button on the control rod, and the three men jumped into the Jinn Universe. They immediately dropped into ready positions, each facing outward, scanning their surroundings. Like all the other planets they’d been to in the Jinn Universe, the sky was a light green. The sun shone down on barren hills…and not much else.

  “Hey, sir,” Zoromski said after a few seconds, “isn’t there supposed to be some sort of civilization here?”

  “Yeah,” Night said, surveying the empty horizon, “Nightsong said the Efreet were supposed to be nearby. Apparently, we’ve been lied to. Go back and get the next group.” He gestured toward a small hill that stood between them and the cliff housing the mouth of the cave. “C’mon, Master Chief, let’s go take a peek and see what there is to see.”

  As they reached the top of the small rise, Night and Master Chief were thrown to the ground as something below them detonated, the blast throwing huge pieces of dirt and rock in all directions. A massive fireball rolled past them.

  “Ugh…” Master Chief said, rolling to his stomach and pushing himself up. “It appears someone didn’t want us in the cave.”

  “I guess not,” Night said. “I think that pretty much confirms we’ve been had.”

  “By who, though?” Master Chief asked. “Not by Nightsong. The Efreet must have found out somehow we were coming.”

  “If it wasn’t that bastard Nightsong,” Night said, “then I don’t know who else it could have been. How else would they have known exactly where and when we were coming?”

  The two began walking back to where platoon was assembling. As they neared the unit, Zoromski returned with the last group, who promptly threw up.

  “What’s up, Captain Train?” Master Gunnery Sergeant Bill Hendrick, the leader of the Ground Force, asked. “Any sign of them?”

  “No—” Night said.

  “Hey, sir,” Sergeant Pierce ‘Big Sky’ Tomas interrupted, “what the hell’s that?”

  The platoon’s leadership turned in time to see a silver ship rising in the sky a mile away.

  “Beats the hell out of me,” Night replied, capturing several images of the ship for future analysis. “It looks like it’s about twice the size of one of the shuttles, but I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “That bastard can move,” Master Chief said as the silver ship rock
eted into the sky. It vanished from sight faster than any ship he had ever seen.

  “Whoever was in that ship, we missed them,” Night said. He looked around to see all of the troops staring up at the sky. “I don’t imagine they’re coming back, either,” he added to the group. “If everyone would like to get back to doing their fucking jobs, we’ll do a quick survey of this planet and then get back to our world to figure out what we’re going to do next.”

  Master Chief closed his own mouth, and his gaze dropped to the men and women under his command. “What the hell is everyone doing staring up at the fucking sky?” he yelled. “The enemy is probably near here somewhere. Get your heads out of your asses and start acting like a military organization. Let’s go! Scouts out! Everyone else, set up a defensible perimeter. Let’s move, people!”

  Anti-Denmark, Anti-Earth, Unknown Date

  “Dude, what’s that up there?” Sergeant Jamal ‘Bad Twin’ Gordon asked, motioning toward a lump 80 feet in front of them.

  “Don’t know,” Sergeant Marcus ‘Spud’ Murphy replied. “Looks like a body. S’pose we ought to check it out?”

  “Beats me, dude. Maybe they leave bodies on the ground here. Looks human, though.” Bad Twin switched to his comm system. “Hey, Master Chief, it looks like there’s a human body up here. Want us to go check it out?”

  “No, I’d like you to wait for the second coming and see if it gets up on its own and starts walking,” Master Chief replied. “Of course I want you to check it out, you moron! Just be careful in case it’s booby-trapped.”

  “Roger that,” Bad Twin replied. He looked at Spud. “You heard the man. Let’s go check it out.”

  The soldiers advanced on the body, rifles at the ready, watching for enemy activity.

  Bad Twin reached it first. “Holy shit!” he cried. “It’s Father Z!”

  “Oh, man, someone fucked him up bad,” Spud said. “Who’d do that to a priest? Medic!”

  The squad’s medic, Corporal Shaun ‘Lucky’ Evertson, ran up and knelt down next to the body. “Careful,” Spud said; “Master Chief said he might be booby-trapped.”

  “Well, then move back, because I can’t check him out without touching him.”

  Seeing the troopers were more interested in finding out if Father Zuhlsdorf was alive than they were worried about possible booby-traps, the medic shrugged and felt for a pulse in Father Zuhlsdorf’s neck. “I’ll be fu…guys, he’s got a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there.” He started stripping out of his combat suit. “Quick! Help me get him in the suit. I can stabilize him better that way.”

  The three soldiers raced to get the inert priest into the combat suit. As they connected the last seal, the suit came to life, analyzed Father Zuhlsdorf and began injecting him with a variety of analgesics, fluids and life-saving medications.

  “Can anyone see Lucky?” Master Chief asked. “What the fuck just happened to him? His suit is showing him as almost dead.”

  “I’m good,” Corporal Evertson said. “We just found a human who was near death, so I gave him my suit. It will be close, but it looks like he may make it.”

  “It’s Father Z,” Bad Twin added. “Looks like someone beat the crap out of him and then shot him with a laser. Of course, that’s after they brought him back from the grave since he was dead and all.”

  “I’ll need one of your suits, too,” Lucky said, who was monitoring his suit. “My suit isn’t going to have enough meds in its pharmacopeia.”

  Anti-Iran, Anti-Earth, Unknown Date

  “That’s it?” Calvin asked, looking down on the Efreeti capital of Belshazzar. “It doesn’t look like much, considering this is the capital of their home world.” Judging by the geography, Calvin guessed he was somewhere over what would be Iran on Earth. Nightsong had overflown the Black Sea, then Calvin had seen the Caspian Sea go past on the left. The city they were overflying had tall buildings made of adobe and brick, arranged in narrow winding streets. Even though the city spread out to cover a fairly large area, each of the houses had its own enclosed courtyard, so there weren’t as many residences as there would have been in a modern city on Terra. Altogether, the city couldn’t have housed more than 10,000 individuals.

  “Home world?” Nightsong asked as he guided the ship past the city toward an enclosure that housed a number of buildings and looked far more modern. A tall, Efreet-manned wall surrounded the buildings, including what looked like an enormous warehouse. “This isn’t their home world,” Nightsong continued. “The real Efreet home world is a long way from here. Whatever gave you the stupid idea this was their home world?”

  “You did,” Calvin said as the shuttle swooped in to land between two large adobe buildings in the enclosure’s central courtyard. “You told us this was their home world.”

  “Did I?” Nightsong asked. The ship touched down without even a tremor, and Nightsong looked across the cockpit at Calvin. “Oops. I lied.”

  “It looks like you lied about a lot of things,” Calvin said.

  “Yeah, well I needed to make getting here important enough that you would come running back to Earth and cross over with me, without thinking about it much first. Sue me.”

  Nightsong smiled. “When I first met you,” he added, “I told you that Aesir are less worried about short-term gains than we are long-term successes. This success has been a long time coming…and it’s even sweeter for all the planning and work that has gone into it.”

  Chapter Seven

  General Assembly, Terran Government HQ, Lake Pedam, Nigeria, October 4, 2021

  “We searched a mile in every direction,” Night said, “but there was no sign of civilization. The only sign of life on the other side was the silver ship we saw leaving, but we don’t know whether our forces were onboard it or not.” The general assembly meeting room spread up from him in a 90 degree cone, 45 degrees on either side of the center aisle. The room was packed, with every seat taken; all the representatives’ aides had to watch from their offices.

  “Why can’t you tell if they were aboard?” President Nehru asked. “Wouldn’t you have been able to contact them over your implants?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Night replied. “If they were on the ship, we should have been able to contact them. Either they weren’t onboard, they were incapacitated or there was some sort of interference that kept us from reaching them. We are unable to determine which of these happened. I think our personnel were captured by a third party, who then blew up the initial landing zone, but that is just a guess; we don’t have any hard evidence to confirm it.”

  “What are your recommendations?” the president asked.

  Before Night could respond, he saw motion out of the corner of his left eye and dove to the right away from it. He rolled and came up on one knee, reaching for the laser pistol in his holster…except he hadn’t been allowed to bring it into the session. It was outside the conference chamber in the weapons storage facility.

  Just to the left of where he had been standing now stood a man and a creature that looked like a seven-foot-tall salamander. An Efreeti! He had to protect the president!

  Night’s senses went into overdrive, and he looked around for something he could use as a weapon. Seeing nothing, he gathered himself to charge the alien as several of the representatives screamed. He could see movement as doors opened throughout the auditorium; he knew it was the security force personnel responding to the threat.

  Night turned back to the man. Swarthy in complexion, the man was dressed in the long robe worn by Muslim men, along with a ghutra headdress. The man had dark hair and eyes, and badly needed a shave. Night could also see the man held a package wrapped in chains.

  “Nobody move,” the man said in Farsi, holding up his bundle. “This is a bomb!” He brought his left hand out from under the parcel and held up a joystick. His thumb held down the button on top of the controller. “And this is a dead-man’s switch,” he added. “If I release this button, or if you kill me, the bomb will blow up. I suggest no one
does anything that might make me nervous.” He turned to Night.

  “Captain Train,” the man said, “I would appreciate it if you would come out to where I can see you. You can stand over by the president if it makes you feel better.”

  Night slowly got to his feet and moved to the president, his eyes on the intruders the entire time, looking for an opportunity he could exploit. It did make him feel better to be near the person he most needed to protect, even if he didn’t have a plan for how he was going to do so. Yet.

  President Nehru waved the security forces back. “What is it you want?” she asked.

  “I am not here to hurt anyone today, and I do not intend to take up much of your time,” the man said. “I just have a few announcements I need to make. You may call them demands, but they are not demands, so much as statements about how your lives have changed, and what you must do to adapt to the new reality you find yourselves in. If you want to live, that is.”

  “Yes?” President Nehru asked. Night had never heard so much sarcasm loaded into a single syllable.

  The man smiled. “The Supreme Leader wishes you to know the so-called “Republic of Terra” is no more. All ties with off-planet civilizations are dissolved as of today. Any aliens currently polluting our soil are to leave or be exterminated immediately. All the nations on Earth have now been absorbed into the Fourth Persian Empire, and Sharia law is now in effect across the entire planet. Any infractions will be dealt with accordingly. The Supreme Leader will have more information on what this means to you, and how the new laws are to be enforced, soon.”

  The Efreeti next to him grunted something, its tongue flicking in and out of its mouth. “Additionally,” the man added, “all technology research is forbidden from this day forward. Anyone found conducting research into any area of technology will be summarily executed. As of this moment, all replicators are to cease functioning and be turned over to us. The penalty for disobedience is simple. Your nation’s capital will burn in a nuclear fire for the first infraction. After that, your entire country will feel the wrath of Allah, and all will die in the fires of his anger.”