Heart of Annihilation

WiDō Publishing
Salt Lake City, Utah
widopublishing.com

Copyright © 2014 by C. R. Asay

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Steven Novak
Book design by Marny K. Parkin

Print ISBN: 978-1-937178-57-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014946925

Printed in the United States of America

For
Dad who pioneered the way
and
Brett who proved to me the way was possible

The space between dimensions compressed Caz’s lungs, her brain—even the beating of her heart. She clenched the warm, silver orb to her chest as the nothingness around her threatened to steal it away. It wasn’t so much pain she felt as the sensation that she was going to implode. With a fiery burst of energy, her heart resumed beating with an irregular thump, thump, thump.

The momentum of the portal jump threw her onto her knees. Something spiny bristled through the legs of her pants. A hot breeze prickled her brow with sweat. The sun scorched her neck, uninhibited by clouds. Her lungs finally expanded, filling with thick, rich oxygen saturated by the wild, pungent scents only found in the envirophylums on Retha. She inhaled again and again, certain she’d drown in the overwhelming atmosphere of this foreign dimension.

The blue, zapping electrical light from the portal brightened the ground around her. Her hand slipped through the blood on the silver orb, and she cradled it close to her chest.

Blood.

The blood glistened crimson in the over-bright sunlight. This wasn’t just anyone’s blood. This was Vin’s blood.

Caz staggered to her feet.

A collection of alien buildings rose to her right. Caz bore left. She didn’t know where she was going, but it wouldn’t be there.

Her legs shushed through the dry plants. Grass, it was called. Dry grass. What dimensions had grass? Ehtar? Uninhabitable. Treah? Earth?

Earth. She recognized it now. The scents were the same ones that permeated her munitions lab at home. Earth. Why Earth?

The ground leveled under her feet. The coarseness of dirt became something more substantial. Hard and smooth. Almost like a road but, strangely, not made of metal.

One foot in front of the other. She followed the road because it took her away from the buildings and because it made each step easier than walking in the grass.

Someone was sure to follow her here. Somewhere, dimensions away, Zell would put things together and track her. They would find her and there was only one punishment for what she’d done.

The road became softer. Dust clogged her throat. How did they live here, these Earth children? How could they stand the complete and total inability to communicate with the almost nonexistent electrical fields?

It was torture of the worst kind. But she couldn’t think about that now. She needed to focus. They would expect her to go far afield, place after place, confuse them.
What wouldn’t they expect?

Caz stopped her mindless tread. A building stood before her, long and squat with arches trailing to the left. The entrance had three larger archways topped by a matching number of bell towers. A cross was mounted above the center bell, another one behind on the higher roof.

Ancient, wrinkled skin surrounded brown eyes of the man standing before her. Human. His clothing was coarse and earthy. Dirt smudged his hands and face. A large wooden beam lay at his feet. The hammer in his hand dropped onto a small pile of tools with a clunk.

“
Hola.
” He stood there motionless.

What did he see when he looked at her? Blood covered her in delicate spatters, and was streaked and drying on her hands. The red contrasted the silvery-white of her clothing. She held the warm, glowing sphere to her chest, while her other hand clutched the equally bloody knife.

So, either she was a threat or someone in need of help. She saw something in his eyes. Something devout. Not many Rethans believed in any deity beyond their sciences, but the ones that did could always be counted on for one thing: compassion.

Caz fell to her knees.

“Please,” she whispered.

He held his ground. “Are you injured,
Señorita
?”

Caz clutched her precious Heart of Annihilation tight to her chest. Her fingers clenched on the knife. With a painful release she placed the sphere on the ground.

“Please,” she repeated. “Please hide this for me.”

He shook his head very slowly.

“Please.” Her voice elevated to desperate pleading. It was all she could do not to raise her weapon and force him to comply. Caz rolled it toward him but kept her fingertips on it. “It must be hidden. Here. Where no one will find it. No one but me.”

The man took a step back, hesitated, and then approached. He dropped to his knees.

“Who are you?”

“Take it.” Caz pressed the sphere toward him.

“Is it dangerous?”

“No.” The lie came easily.

He placed his hands on it. Caz’s fingers locked onto the sphere. Their eyes met. This had to happen. The marshals would take her, convict her, and send her through the RAGE portal. The only way she would ever keep the device from them—the only way she would ever be able to retrieve it again was right here.

“I will save it for you,
Señorita.
Right here.” He gestured toward his tools where a hole had been dug in the ground.

She needed to give it to this stranger, this simple man. There were no calculations that could help her this time. No science, no math to give her a controlled outcome. All she could do was commit this place to memory and use Ben Attikin’s key to jump across dimensions. Run through the different worlds. Confuse them. Lose them.

“It’s warm,” the man said.

“Hide it.” Caz retracted her hand and clenched her fist. Her fingers were cold. Her cheeks were wet. A scream caught in her throat and hung suspended in an agonizing lump. She charged the silver coin in her hand, using the remaining voltage in her body, and tossed it out to the side. Lightning exploded from the core, drenching her surroundings and the man in a cacophony of dancing blue light.

The man scrambled backward, pulling the sphere with him.

Caz took one last agonized look at the Heart of Annihilation . . . her Heart, and stepped through the portal.

21 years later
Rose

My knuckles cut across Lieutenant Justet’s teeth in a breaking cascade of pain. Electric, blue light burst across my vision and the bulb above my head exploded in a shower of sparks. I stumbled and ducked in surprise.

My hand throbbed, going numb. The gash across my knuckles welled up with blood and I gripped my wrist, mouthing “ow.” I staggered to my feet, chest heaving. The coin tumbled from my hand and clattered next to Justet’s boot.

The hallway was much darker now, even with the flashing echoes of light blistering across my retinas. Lieutenant Justet lay sprawled across the tile floor like a pile of trailer trash, shock showing in his crossed eyes. Blood smeared his peach-fuzz mustache. I swear he must’ve had a mullet at some point and an engine hanging from a tree behind his doublewide.

The noise of the NCO club resurfaced. A baseball game shouted from a TV above the bar, joining its racket to the heavy beat of a metal remix. Chairs scraped and a chorus of “ohs” mingled with the chaos. A crowd of soldiers collected at my back, gawking down at the officer I’d just floored. An ache pounded deep in my skull above my left ear, and I flinched shut the accompanying eye.

I looked from Justet to the coin and back, my heart hammering. He followed my gaze and jolted up onto one elbow. His hand closed over the coin before I could make a grab for it.

“You hit me,” Justet said, sounding surprised and winded. I felt the same. “You never . . . I can’t believe you dared . . .” Our eyes locked and his lips pulled back, revealing bloody teeth. He tightened his hand around the coin. “Why’d you take it, Kris?”

Kris? I took an angry step, my fists clenched. Nobody called me by my first name anymore. Specialist Rose or simply Rose was proper military etiquette. Rose itself doubled equally as well for a first name. Kris was . . . well, someone I hadn’t been for years.

Yeah, I’d taken the coin from his desk in an impulsive moment of larceny. But it wasn’t his. That much I knew. If only he’d told me where he’d gotten it when I’d asked him tonight instead of offering a lot of toothy innuendo, I wouldn’t have had to clock him in his slimy, puckering kisser. I swallowed back my desire to interrogate him some more with my fists.

This is exactly why I don’t wear civilian clothes to a club,
I wanted to point out to Justet and the gawkers. A uniform stated that I was a co-worker, a comrade, rather than a female available for trawling. It was simple, really. Not that someone like Justet could understand such a concept. He tried to get to his feet but fell back on his elbow.

Frayed strands of my waist-length, braided hair floated around my head and tickled my cheek. I combed it back with trembling fingers as a couple of privates rushed forward to help Justet. They gave me and my bloody hand a wide berth. Justet jerked away from their attempts to help him up.

“Do you want me to get the MPs, sir?” one private asked.

“No!” Justet and I said together.

We exchanged startled looks. The last thing I needed was the MPs nosing around in my personal business—and my wall locker. Every tidbit of information I had about Dad was stashed in there, including some documents stamped classified, I was ashamed to admit. I eyed Justet. I would’ve thought he’d want to have me court martialed on the spot. What was he hiding that he didn’t want the MPs involved?

“It’s fine. He’s fine.” I said, turning to the crowd. My voice sounded way too loud. There were shrugs and some covert snickers. I could hear them thinking that it was only Justet and he’d probably deserved it. Which he had. The shoulder-to-shoulder crowd thinned as they went back to their drinks and dates.

The lieutenant crawled to his feet, his ruddy face flushed.

“Fine? You think I’m fine? You hit me.” His voice squeaked like a prepubescent boy. Sweat dripped from his carroty head.

“Sir?” The private who’d offered to get the MPs raised his eyebrows in question. Justet looked torn for a moment, but he clearly didn’t want the MPs any more than I did. With an irritated flick of his hand, Justet waved the private off and the kid left us alone, relatively speaking. The club crowd pressed a noisy, camouflage wall of support at my back.

Justet absently walked the coin between his fingers. I followed the flash of silver with my eyes. I knew every detail of the thing from the ridged edges, the impossibly smooth surface, the symbol of lightning on one side and five capitalized letters raised across the other. RETHA.

That coin was the best clue I’d found concerning Dad’s disappearance, and it was back in the hands of none other than Lieutenant Justet.

Justet saw my eyes on the coin and quickly shoved it into his pocket. I watched it disappear with a sense of loss and found myself rubbing my dog tags hidden under my shirt. I wished I hadn’t dropped the stupid thing.

“Nice hook, Rose!” Corporal Devon Thurmond, a.k.a. the Thurmonator, broke through the wall of camouflage.

I half turned. Thurmond stood behind me, fists clenched. He looked strange in jeans and a plain white t-shirt when I was used to only seeing him in uniform, but his thick neck and high and tight hair cut could have belonged to any of the dozens of soldiers in the noisy bar.

“The offer still stands.” Justet’s expression was earnest, his persistence almost admirable.

“Screw you, sir,” I said.

“Damn, Rose,” Thurmond breathed. “It’s like a whole new you.”

“You don’t know what you’re messing with, Kris.” Justet’s eye twitched.

“Do you?” I put my face in his, one heartbeat away from taking the coin by force.

Thurmond grabbed my arm and dragged me away before we started brawling again. It was only with the greatest restraint that I let him. Another second of looking at Justet’s stupid face or smelling the sour tobacco on his breath, I would have done something I’d really regret.

Realization of my actions came full circle as we skirted tables and chairs and wove between hot bodies, packed together like M-16 rounds in a full mag. I ran a trembling hand down my face.

I’d just struck an officer.

Thurmond pushed his way through the crowds to the bar. For a moment I thought he was going to get me a drink, but he just grabbed a small, white towel proffered by the bartender. Blood flowed freely from the open skin on my knuckle. I took the towel and applied gentle pressure. The coarse fabric sent a sharp sting up my arm. Why hadn’t anyone ever mentioned that punching someone hurts you as much as it does them?

“You know, earlier today when I said you should work on your right hook, I didn’t mean on an actual human.” Thurmond shouted over the music and the ball game. “Even a creep officer like Justet.”

The spot pounded above my left ear. I acknowledged it by squeezing shut the accompanying eye. We pushed our way through the crowd.

“What was I supposed to do? The ‘No sirs’ didn’t work.”

“The . . . Wait, did he come on to you again?”

I mimed gagging and cut him a look.

“Fine. I’ll just go finish the bastard off, then.” He back-stepped in the direction of Justet.

I snagged his sleeve. “Thanks, but I’m already in enough trouble.”

“Yup.” He let me pull him toward the door. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell everyone he was drunk and acting in a way ill fitting a man of his rank. He does that a lot, right?”

I coughed out a humorless laugh. “Yeah. That’ll fly. I’ll save you a seat at my court martial.”

I avoided eye contact with other members of our 19th Special Forces group as we waded through the masses of soldiers packed into the small space. Music hammered against my queasy stomach. Colored lights flashed to the beat.

“Rose!” A nasally voice shouted in my ear.

I jumped. A young private blocked my way. What was his name again? Luigi? Loogie?

“Hey, yeah, can I buy you a drink?” He said it very fast as though to get it all out before I could hand out my rejection. His eager grin showed me a half-rotted front tooth that made it appear as though his teeth were gapped. I recoiled, not sure how to respond.

“Luginbeel. Really? Your timing sucks, man,” Thurmond said and elbowed him out of the way. “Come on, Rose, I’ll walk you back to the barracks.”

“Thanks.” I rubbed my eyes with two fingers. “Did I really just hit Justet?”

“Yep. Floored him. You could hear it all the way across the room.” Thurmond brushed his hand across my back. A shiver of energy ran the length of my spine. “You sure you didn’t tase him too?”

I looked at my hand and remembered the flash of blue light as I’d struck him. There’d been a surge of power as well, and the bulb above us had exploded. What had really happened?

I reached for the door handle. The door flung open into my face. I stumbled back to avoid being bludgeoned and stumbled on Thurmond’s foot. He caught me under the arms and hoisted me back to my feet. I mumbled thanks to Thurmond and presented the assailant a scowl from the darkest depths of my tired soul.

Major Jaimie Kuntz, the commander, held the door open with her foot. Her stern cut hair swung across her face and caught on her lip. She brushed it away and softly touched the thick scar on her face that went from hairline to cheek.

The ache exploded above my left ear. I groaned and kneaded the spot with my knuckle.

Yep, I was in trouble.