New Phoenix - Shorts (2) Read online

  David T Myers

  New Phoenix - Shorts (2)

  New Phoenix Chronicles

  Copyright © 2019 by David T Myers

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

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  Contents

  Important- Please Read

  All I have left...

  The End?

  Coming Soon...

  Important- Please Read

  Hello, thank you for downloading the New Phoenix Chronicles starter pack. Within this document are two short stories, which introduce a brand new series scheduled for release in 2020. But, by agreeing to join my mailing list, you have automatically become eligible to receive another eight short stories delivered into your in-box over the coming months. All these stories are free. Just watch your in-box and each month I’ll send you a new one.

  I’ll send the third of the short stories in seven days, and then new stories once a month for the next seven months after that. So, watch your mail for that.

  Of course, if you don’t enjoy these short stories, you can unsubscribe from my mailing list at any time.

  Thank you again.

  David T Myers

  All I have left...

  All I have left are my memories. Well, mine and everyone else’s. At my age, it’s hard to tell the difference.

  “I’m sorry this is taking so long,” Rodney Simmons says, and fumbles with the key to the vault room.

  He’s the bank clerk assigned to me. The mem-port at the back of his neck peeks out from his collar. It’s a j23, a new model, not like mine. I can’t remember when I last had an upgrade.

  Rodney’s hands are shaking. Whether that’s because of me or the multiple security cameras watching him, I can’t tell. And I don’t care. I just want to get to my private box.

  “Amazing race last week,” he says.

  “Yes.” My mind flashes back to last Tuesday, at the starting line. The eight men next to me trembled with focused anticipation. Every muscle in my sleek, fit body was poised. When the gun cracked, I sprang forward—

  “When I sprang forward, I sensed more power than I’d ever felt,” Rodney says.

  “It was a thrill,” I reply.

  “The strength in my legs. I didn’t even hear the roar of the crowd until it was over.”

  “A new world record, 8.43 seconds. All mine.”

  “Yes, all mine.” Rodney’s face splits into a grin. “Not every day you get to experience that. I LIKED it immediately.”

  “Me too,” I say, with less enthusiasm.

  The door beeps, and we enter.

  The vault is like the inside of an igloo. A dome roof looked down on to a smooth, cold, shining floor. Five hundred private boxes wait inside, each carrying different secrets and treasures.

  Rodney retrieves mine.

  I can no longer contain my excitement. I move forward, quicker than I intended. I wince. The arthritic pain in my legs brings me to a stumbling halt.

  I’m 102, and I’ll be dead soon. The doctors think I have three months. Maybe less. Old age catches up to all of us.

  How long ago did I deposit this? I can’t remember. My mind is full of memories. Most of them downloaded from the web, like the race. A few treasures of my own have been SHARED with select friends and family. I lose track.

  I can’t remember the details of this one, but of course it involves my son, Sidney.

  Rodney opens my box. It’s empty but for the data disc.

  He swallows, the craving on his face clear. I can see him wondering what the disc contains. But it’s not for him. It’s mine. It belongs in my head, not his.

  I exhale, realizing that I’ve been gripping my cane too tightly. The doctors tell me not to get worked up. But sometimes it’s difficult. I know a collector when I see one.

  They hunt and pay for the very best memories: those precious moments in time that can change the direction of a life, or fill us with joy, or such sadness that we carry it with us to the end of our days. It’s an expensive hobby—and lucrative, if you have those sorts of memories to sell. But I would never hawk this. Not to the likes of him.

  “Would you like to upload the memory, sir?” It’s difficult to ignore the longing in his voice.

  “Please, but I’d like a closed connection. I don’t want anyone else having access or to find this on the Nexus,” I say, through gritted teeth.

  “Of course.”

  When he returns, he’s carrying a cable. He plugs one end into the wall port and carries the other to me.

  “Sir, may I watch the memory through my goggles? I wouldn’t experience it, but . . .”

  I’m tempted to say no but decide there’s no harm in it.

  I give him a resigned nod. He smiles and then inserts the disc into the cable before plugging it into my mem-port.

  * * *

  Sidney was eight years old and huddled next to me. He was wearing a beige parka and white gloves. We were shivering in the frozen darkness, sharing a blanket. His small, gloved hand was wrapped around my bigger one. The ground was hard, wet, and chilly beneath our bottoms.

  “Are you ready?” I asked. My voice was young and strong. I felt him nod, and his hand squeezed mine. “It won’t be long.”

  Then it started. The sky began to glow. The light moved in a giant ellipse, like an eye opening wider with each passing minute. Reds and oranges appeared against the horizon, offset by dark blotches of clouds. At the top was blue sky.

  Sidney gripped my hand tighter, and I could feel his excitement. I turned away from the ellipse and watched him. Shadows covered his beautiful face but slowly retreated from the advancing light.

  Then, as if the earth had given birth to it, a blinding ball of white pushed up from behind the trees and into the heavens. Sidney was laughing, and it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

  * * *

  Rodney’s eyes are wide.

  “That was a sunrise,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “From before the Obelix! Before the cataclysm!”

  “Yes. I watched it with my son.”

  “Before the cataclysm!”

  I smile at the memory, still fresh in my mind.

  “That experience must be worth a fortune,” says Rodney.

  “It’s not for sale.”

  “But, it’s over 180 years old.”

  “I said it’s not—”

  But then I register what Rodney said.

  One hundred and eighty years old? But that’s impossible. This is something Sidney and I SHARED. This is ours. Mine. Or is it?

  Rodney is offering me money. I push him away, stumbling, hobbling to get out, the data disc clutched tightly in my hand.

  All I have left are memories. Only now, I’m not sure any of them are mine.

  The End?

  The hangar was empty. We’d run the same mission at least twenty times, and it had never been empty. My hands tightened around the rifle. Of all the days for an op to go sideways . . .

  Last time we were here, four trucks had been waiting, parked side by side. Attached to the back of each was a large orange crate: 100 feet long
and 20 feet high. On the mission before that, there’d been six trucks. Once, there’d been twelve, and the hangar could have fit more. Today, there were no orange crates, no vehicles, no people, and—perhaps most disturbing of all—no droids.

  “Keep it tight, boys,” said the boss lady, Sergeant Rainey. Her voice caught for a fraction of a second. A hint of false confidence behind the order.

  It didn’t matter. I needed to double down and do my job right. Let Rainey worry about hers.

  I stalked across the tire-scuffed concrete floor with my rifle hot. A soft electronic hum followed by a dull clank from my Q-suit’s metal boots punctuated each movement.

  “Nexus is down,” reported the new kid, Private Chris.

  “Wrong time to be downloading porn anyway, son,” I retorted.

  “Tombs, cut the chatter, stay sharp,” Sergeant Rainey said.

  “As a razor.” The thing Rainey didn’t understand about me was that I could be sharp and witty at the same time. Sergeant Gregory had gotten that, and hadn’t minded the banter, but Rainey had always been about the job—even before they made her a sergeant. Now that she’d taken command, it looked like she wanted to rein me in.

  I was a pain in everyone’s arse half the time, and a dick the other half, but no one could say that Martin Tombs didn’t get the job done.

  I swung my rifle to-and-fro, glancing at my monitor for any sign of ambush or movement. With the hangar empty, there were few places hostiles could conceal themselves. The only blind spots in the room were behind the rows of columns to either side. For the moment, we didn’t need the Nexus; I needed the new kid to watch my six.

  I loped across the floor and took cover behind one of the columns. Gun ready, I slipped around the column to scout out our blind spot.

  “I’ve got cargo,” I said.

  A single orange crate rested in the far corner of the room. There were no trucks attached to it and no droids waiting in standby mode to help us move the damn thing to the Q-pad. Behind the crate was a Perspex wall separating the Q-pad from the hangar. Except it was riddled with cracks. Something had hit it hard in the last year. Something big and incredibly strong.

  I darted forward as fast as the suit would allow, my eyes continually shifting from the area in front of me to the monitors on the inside of the suit’s egg-shaped visor. Reaching the container without incident, I scanned my surroundings. No detectable threats.

  I knocked once on the container and scowled. “It’s empty. I got bupkis, Sarge.”

  “Clear,” the new kid agreed.

  “Clear,” the boss lady confirmed.

  I reached behind my back, and the rifle snapped into its magnetic lock. The orange crate had a door big enough to let me through, but it was locked. It wasn’t unusual to find an empty container here. I assumed command sent the crates back after we Q-jumped home. But there should have been something . . .

  The Perspex wall also bothered me. The reinforced plastic was able to withstand bullets, and could even stop a vehicle driving headlong into it. I ran my gloved hand over the cracked surface, checking the damage.

  The frosted substance had survived whatever had struck it for the most part. The main point of damage was a hole the size of a soccer ball. I peered through to make sure no one was on the other side but could see only the Q-pad and the Obelix, a three-hundred-foot spear of rock.

  Where was everyone?

  I clumped out from behind the pillar to rejoin the squad.

  Like me, the other two members of the Q-squad wore suits of black, light blue, and gray Kevlar mesh with protective metal plates over the limbs and torso, all of which hid a robotic exoskeleton. My companions turned their fishbowl heads toward me. The boss lady’s suit had seen some miles—it sported more than a few scratches, burns, and bullet marks. Chris, on the other hand, looked as if he’d just walked his out of the shop. I could almost see my reflection in it.

  From a combat perspective, the suits were solid for incendiary or smash-and-run jobs, but we weren’t supposed to abuse them the way we did. The propeller heads at Obsidian HQ got grumpy when we brought ’em back beat up. I’d been lectured on previous tours.

  “They’re not invincible, you know!” “You meatheads should be made to pay for the repairs—then you might show a bit more respect for the equipment.”

  Up until my last mission, I’d ignored that sort of warning. You don’t give a soldier a gun and tell him not to shoot it. I’d figured a few scratches here and there kept us all in a job and the terrorists on their toes.

  Besides, with both Rainey and Sergeant Gregory, the boss man, watching my back, I was unstoppable. At least, that’s what I’d thought.

  I’d seen the truth for myself. Any terrorist with a rocket launcher or high-powered laser could cut me out of this thing like sardines from a tin. We’d been sloppy and had paid the price. I wasn’t going to leave anyone behind. Ever again.

  Did Rainey blame herself for what happened to Gregory, or was that just me that felt guilty?

  “Maybe we landed at the wrong spot,” Chris said through my comms, bringing me back to the present. Each suit was self-contained in case the unthinkable happened during a Q-jump, so strictly speaking, I didn’t need to be standing next to the others to be part of the conversation. I could easily have pitched in with the odd comment if I were three districts away.

  “Confirm date and time,” Rainey said, and I squinted toward her, trying to dispel the growing unease in the pit of my stomach. It felt weird to be taking orders from her now.

  Yes, I’d gone for the job, too. No, I wasn’t jealous Rainey had gotten it. I knew I wasn’t really sergeant material. She was a stronger candidate, and with time she’d certainly have a command of her own. But was she ready now? That I couldn’t be sure about.

  “1600 hours, March 22, 536 AO,” Chris said.

  I checked the stabilizer attached to my wrist. “Confirmed.”

  “Confirmed,” Rainey said. “Well, we’re where we’re supposed to be. One year exactly since the last retrieval op. So, where’s the shipment? Tombs, did you check the Obelix?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s still there, which isn’t surprising, considering its size.” Rainey’s helmeted head twisted in my direction, and I was pretty sure she was scowling at me. “Something did try to get into the inner chamber, though. Made a crack in the wall but didn’t breach.”

  “Who would have enough firepower to pull that off?” Chris asked. “Rogues?”

  “Probably,” I replied.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Rainey said. “A rogue would Q-jump onto the pad, same as the rest of us. They’d be more likely to want to break out than get into the Obelix chamber.”

  That was true enough. A Q-jump always landed you on the Q-pad. Every single time. Which was why there were so many defenses surrounding the thing. Any unauthorized time travel was met with a fatal reception.

  “The damage was definitely on this side?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Could be they wanted to disable the defenses. Create a free spot to jump to.”

  “Maybe. It doesn’t answer the question of where our cargo is, though.”

  “I got something,” Chris said.

  He’d disappeared behind a nearby pillar. I frowned. What could he possibly have found? The area was empty.

  “Share visuals, please,” Rainey said.

  “Can’t. Nexus still not responding,” Chris said, his voice tight.

  I swore and bounded across the hangar to join Rainey and Chris near a pile of torn-up droid parts. It took a moment to see what Chris was pointing at. A burgundy stain on the concrete. No. Not one. Several—nearly twenty.

  “Oil leak?” Chris asked.

  I shook my helmeted head. “It looks like blood, son.”

  “Then where are the bodies?” Chris asked, glancing at the boss lady. Rainey didn’t answer. Instead, she walked a short distance away and reported the findings into the stabilizer’s log.

  “Do we abort?” Chris
asked. “Go home and send the cavalry back?”

  “Son, we’re Q-Corps. We are the cavalry. The nearest backup is four hundred years away.”

  “We have our orders,” Rainey agreed. “We are to retrieve those crates. Failing that, we’re going to at least figure out why they aren’t here. Any sign of trouble and we Q-jump back to HQ on the double, Private”—Chris’s head snapped around—“find us a vehicle.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Oh, and Private, weapons hot.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Let’s see what it looks like outside.”

  * * *

  Project Obsidian HQ was located in the center of New Phoenix. Unlike the rest of the megacity, HQ was surrounded by a circular plaza: an open space, 2500 feet from one edge to the other. In total, it occupied over 100 acres of land. HQ itself stretched several miles into the sky and was nearly 1000 feet wide. It was the tallest megacomplex in New Phoenix and home to the High Lords. Or at least it was in our time.

  A small army of drones should have been surrounding Obsidian HQ, circling the building like angry wasps. Guarding the High Lord’s secrets. Today the sky, like the hangar, was empty.

  Chris located a truck big enough to accommodate our suits. The boss lady took the wheel and the private and I mounted the back of the vehicle. We rode the pickup under the shadow of the megacomplex, out of Obsidian’s gates, and across the circle.

  Seven statues stood guard at the edge of the circle. We should have driven past the two that flanked the road into the Lincoln district: the statue of Aaron Noble, the tall bespectacled man who founded New Phoenix, and Eon, the mysterious military leader who protected it during its earliest days. The statue of Noble stood as tall as ever, but Eon’s had been obliterated into rock.

  I stared across the circle at the other statues. The rest were still standing. Only Eon’s had been destroyed. Strange.

  We left the circle behind and drove into the last city on the planet. From the ground, it was almost impossible to see the sun because of all the megacomplexes.