The Cathedral

The Cathedral

by TJ Morris

Published by Bold Venture Press

www.boldventurepress.com

The Cathedral by TJ Morris

Copyright 2016 by TJ Morris. All Rights Reserved.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express permission of the publisher and copyright holder. All persons, places and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to any actual persons, places or events is purely coincidental.

License Notes

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Table of Contents

The Cathedral

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Epilogue

About the Author

Connect with Bold Venture Press

Credits

TJ Morris, Author

Audrey Parente, Editor

Prologue

D-Day

June 6, 1944

Private First Class (PFC) Walker fell to the ground assisted by a silk parabolic parachute. His paratrooper training liked to call it gliding, but to anyone who had ever landed with a 160 lb. pack, it was scarcely gliding. Anti-aircraft fire racketed around him. He saw Stan, Mike, and Paul all hit on the way down; he was sure he would never see them again … WHAM! He hit and rolled as he had been trained, but the impact knocked the wind out of him and he lay on the French soil dazed for a moment. Fire erupted from everywhere around him. Tendrils of flame lanced out of the hedges and ditches. PFC Walker looked around for his unit, but he could see none of his brothers from the 101st Airborne. He fumbled around until he found his Thompson machine gun. He clutched it to his chest and began feeling for a stick magazine. Finding it he snapped it into place and racked the action to charge the weapon. The sky was mostly clear and the full moon hung pendulous in the sky like a beacon to anywhere but here.

Numerous Allied planes flew overhead. Enemy fire spewed up from all around his position. Walker could see faceless American soldiers lumber up, advance, and be ripped to shreds by a machine gun fire coming from the dug-in German infantry. The private surged to his feet to do as he had been trained, not knowing where exactly he was or where he was supposed to go now.

He looked for his lieutenant, his sergeant, his corporal …They were all gone, or somewhere else. The only thing clear to him was a machine gun nest firing on his position. He hunkered down under a small dirt berm as bullets hit the ground and threw dirt into his face. That’s when he finally saw, was it Johnson? Less than 50 yards away another kid was pinned down. Walker thought he knew him from his unit though he had never really met or palled around with him. Johnson was motioning with his hand in the direction of the machine gun nest. "SHIT! He wants to attack that thing!?" Before Walker could scream NO, Johnson was up and running toward the nest. Walker followed, not out of desire, but out of training and necessity.

They lurched across the French farm, darting left and right to take advantage of cover. The nest was less than 100 yards away. Johnson sprinted and began spraying the nest with his Tommie gun. Walker sprinted after him trying to provide cover fire. Less than 50 yards away, Johnson was hit! He stumbled but got back up and continued limping towards the target. They sprayed the enemy position in unison, stopping only to slap a fresh stick magazine into their Thompsons. Less than 20 yards and they were at the base of the hill below the German pillbox. They fell flat against the embankment, taking cover from the ceaseless enemy fire …. Walker was scared and confused, but Johnson was bleeding.

Johnson took out a grenade and motioned to Walker to cover him. Johnson lurched up from his position, lobbing the grenade through the firing slit of the German pillbox. The resulting explosion rocked them, and decimated the interior of the pillbox. The machine gun fell silent. Walker followed behind as fast as he could, grenade in one hand and his machine gun in the other. Johnson shouted, 7 o’clock, duck!

Walker hit the ground just before a group of hidden German infantry mowed Johnson down. PFC Walker saw his fellow soldier die. Enraged at the sight, he lobbed his grenade at the squad and simultaneously charged up the hill to the pill box seeking cover and spraying .45 caliber bullets at the on-coming enemy.

The inside of the pillbox was littered with shrapnel, gore, and empty machine gun bullet casings. Peeking out, Walker saw he had killed his pursuers and was safe for the moment. He began searching with his hands to find more weapons and ammo but the darkness of the night and the shelter of the pillbox made the search difficult. Suddenly a flash lit the entire hillside throwing a beam of light through the gun slit. Walker moved to the opening to see the source of the light when he was rocked off his feet by an ear shattering BOOM!

That’s when he saw a squad of 3 German infantry moving toward a metallic glint nearly 100 yards to the east. Walker leapt into action. He wasn’t going to let these Jerrys kill anyone else, least of all from a downed American aircraft. He charged out of the pill box towards them. Down the berm, Walker sprinted. The Germans had their backs to him, all the better. When he was within 30 yards, they finally heard him and turned at his approach. Walker opened fire and mowed the 3 of them down so quickly they didn’t even look surprised.

Walker inspected the German soldiers for identification and maps. Finding nothing useful, he moved toward the downed aircraft to see if any of the crew was still alive.

The plane augured into a small hillside digging a ditch in its aftermath. It was silver and of an odd shape. Thinking the wing probably sheared off, Walker climbed the body of the aircraft and peeked over into what should have been the cockpit. Instead of a joystick and dials, Walker saw an apparently young-teen-aged boy with an abnormally large head. He could not distinguish any of the child’s features, but the odd flashing and beeping of something on the console alternately lit the visor of the pilot’s helmet.

Again the night erupted into gunfire. Upon hearing the skirmish when Walker engaged the small German unit, a much larger one advanced on the area to ascertain the situation. No fewer than 12 men. Walker decided it was time to go. He grabbed his boot knife and freed the pilot from his safety restraints. Pulling the seemly teen pilot from the cockpit was easier than he would have imagined. He was lighter than his 13 year old sister. He had one hand on his Thompson and one hand in the collar of the child’s odd silver suit. Since when did the allies use children as pilots? Walker made his way towards a defensible position and began receiving fire from the squad that was chasing him.

Where he chose to make his stand was little more than a depression. Walker threw the silver-clad child into it and turned to face the oncoming German menace. Bullets bounced off the earth all around him. He darted left, firing as he went to draw the fascists away from the survivor. After hitting one of them, he darted back to the right following the same ploy and dropped a couple more. That’s when his world changed. A blinding flash of light knocked him to the ground. He felt sharp pains in his legs, abdomen and chest. Walker thought he must be dying. He was barely aware of a large silver saucer coming down and flooding the area with a shadow-less brilliance.

The clamor of battle faded as the light seemed to absorb his entire being down to his soul. So this is death…

Chapter 1

For the Glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it …

Isaiah 40: 5

His given name was But for the Love of Jesus Christ We Would All Be Damned Smith, III; BC for short. The name was peculiar to BC’s societal caste. Some thought of it as a profession but you had to be born a Cleanser. This fact was inconsequential to the rest of the passengers aboard the Earth-bound shuttle. His clean-shaven head gleamed in the artificial light as he moved toward his seat. Cleansers had precedence over everyone but a higher-level Cleanser in all aspects of society. This status was fine for the sociopathic, but for one with emotions the singularity was often too much.

The lack of gravity made transit to the only port seat in the cabin clumsy. With a shrugged thought BC powered up his personal field and utilized the electromagnetic flow generated to attract his entire body to the metallic surface of the floors. Like a druid of old, his heavy leather cloak and austere looks were only perpetuated by the aura of electricity that seemed to crackle around him. Other passengers shared looks with each other in deference to this guerilla representative of the Church’s Central Council. It was rumored that the glance of a Cleanser was sufficient to cause death at the most, or impotence at the least. BC almost chuckled at the ill-founded suspicions knowing well the mental and physical strength required to end the existence of another human being.

BC’s brow furrowed. He was all too familiar with the act of Cleansing; the name itself was merely a catch phrase taught early on in seminary to camouflage the act of terminating enemies of the Council.

Terminating enemies of the Council, his surrogate had said, that’s ‘Term’ for short, just like our names. The hysterical laughter of Jesus Died for Our Sins Smith, JD, still haunted BC. Too well did he know the weight of God’s work these many years after his only parent had been Cleansed by the order he served. Death was, however, the price of heresy whether deranged or deliberate.

BC stroked the goatee under his angular features darkening his already sinister visage. Arriving at the already occupied port seat, his dark eyes narrowed in silent dismissal of a sniveling mining accountant too happy about his status to await the arrival of superiors before taking the port. As the little man scurried to the general cabin he was greeted with the hoots and jeers of union miners; their satisfaction with the insult of CCC Mining Company’s bureaucrat replaced their intimidation by the presence of the Cleanser.

Earth shuttle Destiny departing Mars mining satellite in T-minus 30 seconds and counting, piped the intercom. Please fasten personal restraint harnesses and terminate all personal power packs.

The ship vibrated and hummed as the fusion generators powered up in anticipation of the inertial push they would soon accomplish to speed the transport towards Earth. The crew need only compute the best line of travel from a large mineral mass, Mars, and the appropriate gravitational sub-orbit around Earth. Rocket thrusters would be responsible for small course corrections and eventually final docking procedures. The whole trip should only last six hours at the sub-light speeds the shuttle was capable of, that is, if the crew ever launched.

Just then, the cockpit door slammed open and a furious pilot emerged. He made a visual sweep of the cabin’s interior finding the source of his ire in the seat occupied by BC. Power down Cleanser, or you’ll ruin the trajectory computations! the dark skinned Arab demanded from the door of the cockpit. A mental nudge lowered the power flowing along the Cleanser’s synaptic pathways and returned him to the weightless clumsiness enjoyed by the other passengers.

Satisfied at solving the problem, and surviving the encounter with a Cleanser, the pilot returned to his duties and soon the passengers were rewarded with the force of the ship accelerating to speed.

It had been a long time since his departure from Earth. The council considered BC the premier Cleanser in all the orders, which carried the responsibilities of an internal disciplinarian. For too many years BC enforced Council rule in the out-reaches of Earth’s new stellar industrialization on workers, bureaucrats, Church officials, and Cleansers alike, in the service of the Church and God. His long absence gave him time to perfect survival skills and kept him away from the infighting common on Earth. Everything familiar to him ended with the emergency recall; now he must return to the cauldron on his native world.

Violent potential rivaled the beneficial powers a Cleanser possessed. This was the Cleansers’ blessing and curse. BC removed his cloak and settled in for the transit.

* * *

The history of the Cleansers was almost comical in its evolution. Throughout recorded time people were afflicted with a disorder which gave them the ability to see and hear things other men were unaware of. Some societies saw these people as touched by God; others saw them as societal outcasts or even possessed of devils. The end of the twentieth century finally shed a limited light on the nature of the disease. It was labeled Schizophrenia and firmly identified its patrons as demented or mentally handicapped. The crude medicines of this time period merely suppressed the very act of life and offered no clues to its true nature.

Schizophrenia is increased activity in the neural pathways of the brain and nervous systems; this jump in activity stimulated previously unused portions of the human brain; unless treated properly the stimulus is unintelligible to the sufferer. That was until Dr. Thaddeus Jericho.

Dr. Jericho was a devout Baptist minister in love with a woman afflicted with Schizophrenia. She claimed to be in almost constant communication with God and convinced her husband to administer painful penance on her so she might gain forgiveness for her basic evil nature. Some thought the good doctor enjoyed these sessions sexually as well as spiritually.

Jericho soon observed his wife to be coherent while under moderate doses of electrical shock. Jericho used the bankrolls of his Church to hire bioelectrical engineers to invent an exoskeleton of contacts along his wife’s spine. These were implanted into her primary nerves and charged with household electricity. They sent a steady flow of power along the normal synapses while the many extra synaptic junctions inherent to the schizoid operated at the body’s normal electromagnetic fields. Increased neural capacity in schizoids allowed the brain to process the energized pathways and the lower peripheral paths at the same time.

At first the cure worked beautifully. Jericho’s wife improved to normal as long as she stayed close to an outlet. It was an unprecedented miracle reviled as heresy by the medical community and embraced as a mandate of heaven for the masses of the Dr.’s ministry. Then the visions came. His wife began to see auras around people, and when she touched them, they were generally greeted with a sense well-being. This ability endowed her with a mythos and the moniker The Hand of God. Whether jealous from being upstaged or desirous of his former sadistic encounters, it is not known but the good Dr. electrocuted his wife after brutally beating her at the turn of the twentieth century.

The medical community however did not let his research go to waste. Numerous autopsies revealed mutations in The Hand of God. Technology improved and more and more subjects were tested; exoskeletons were perfected that controlled the symptoms of schizophrenia. Eventually patients were able to don power packs and live independent of outlets. The side effects of the radical med.-treats persisted and were capitalized on by Churches and religions. Schizoids became healers and soothsayers, roving revivalists who brought the act of faith back to the Church. Every Church had a schizophrenic outfitted with the exoskeleton and power pack and because of their healing mystique, they were nicknamed Cleansers.

In the early 21st century, nuclear fusion was perfected and minute power packs proliferated Earth. Whole buildings were powered by fusion packs as small as a fist. Cleansers received a pack that fit neatly within the pocket left by removing the appendix. Micro implants were placed over the entire synaptic system causing new side effects. Increased power and more complex wiring imbued the recipients with the ability to affect small and great electromagnetic fields. Healing became more effective, as did the ability to interrupt human neural pathways.

The power also led to research into gravitational field distortions for the space program, consequently leading to the mercantile exploitation of the Terran solar system, and some ongoing interstellar exploration. These advances made BC’s power possible; his efficiency in their application was why he was headed home to Earth. Cleansers were now under the command of the Church’s Central Council, or CCC. These religious leaders effectively controlled the government of the globe using Cleansers as the hand of friendship and the long arm of the law. BC was the strongest arm in the law at the peak of his order, and fresh from the out-colonies where he perfected his physical, mental, and martial skills in the protection of CCC’s interests.

With this history, BC presented himself at the space dock for travel back to Earth on the Destiny. Shunned by the rest of the shuttle’s occupancy like a savage witch doctor BC sat in solitude now securely fastened to his seat. The glowing lights of orbital stations passed slowly by as the shuttle slowed from the sub-light passage and prepared for its final approach to the Antarctic pole of Earth.

Ladies and gentlemen, the shuttle is now entering the outer layers of Earth’s atmosphere. Please adjust your straps and shut off any personal power packs, the dull monotone of the Captain droned as BC stared out his port. He finally picked up the target of the pilot’s precious computations — the Cathedral.

* * *

It was a monstrous tower built with the latest technological advances built between the years of 2060 and 2110. Touted by religious leaders as man’s ultimate step toward God, to the rest of the world it was man’s express train to space exploration. From the shuttle port it looked like a giant asshole on the pale bottom of the Earth. BC laughed; if it was so blasted holy perhaps it was God’s asshole. The council would force him to term himself if he ever expressed such heresy, no matter the comic content.

The Cathedral was founded on the most geologically stable continent on earth: Antarctica. The foundations were miles deep. The base structures covered ten square miles with another one hundred square miles of space filled with attached building complexes for support maintenance and business complexes. The tower itself was constructed of the most advanced metals and technology. Financed by the Church controlled harvest of interstellar industrialization, the tower stretched one hundred miles into the Terran sky protruding from the earth’s atmosphere and into the vacuum of space.

Elevators, lifts and cranes moved materials to the upper platform where they could be assembled and launched weightlessly into space without the necessity of expensive launch vehicles. There were nearly two million people living in the densely populated building. Raw materials of space were conversely lowered into the waiting avarice of gray-bound Earthies. The Cathedral’s many landing strips for atmospheric deliveries assisted elevators prone to breakage. The hostility of the South Pole’s weather prevented most ground transport, until the soon to be completed Iceanic tunnels were finished. The image of God arose from the blighted wasteland of the South Pole, man-crafted the domination of yet another new frontier.

BC felt the jolt of the docking rings connecting. He gathered his cloak, emblazoned with the open Hand of God symbol on the left breast, and readied to disembark. The cloak was useless without the skills and powers of a Cleanser. With an added power pack and a Cleanser’s field manipulation skills, the cloak became a heated, cooled, sealed protection against the vacuum of space. Even the most advanced weapons of the 2100’s were ineffective against its protection. The cloak’s properties had not, however, been tested against another Cleanser.

BC exited the air lock first as his traditional position allowed. He looked for the first elevator and a hand-held map with which to navigate.

* * *

The minute BC checked in for his personal mapping computer, an alarm sounded in an expansive office in the CCC Chambers of the tower. A bald secretary responded to find the Cleanser finally on station.

He hit an intercom button and said, Smith is on terminal Vicegerent.

Excellent, a rich baritone voice responded, monitor his communications and have him observed until he arrives here. He was instructed to report immediately.

Yes sir, the underling said as Davide turned his chair away from the reception area. He turned to view the skyline of Earth on his 12 x 12-foot interior wall view screen. It was not an office with a view, but at this altitude a window would be less than advisable. The office was so high in the tower its exterior cameras furnished a bird’s eye-view of the Aurora Australis; they could only last a few minutes exposed to the outside because of their great height. A great many of them alternated in and out of protective enclosures to share recording duties. This caused an annoying flicker in the vista but beat the hell out of interminable days on end of artificial light.

Tired of musing, Davide turned to his computer and brought up the file on BC Smith.

"Enter full name please Brother," the computer responded when queried.

Damn these Cleansers and their names, snarled Davide. He hurriedly found his little black book (some things cannot be improved upon) and found the full name of the accursed Cleanser. He quickly entered the information followed by a series of complex passwords and was rewarded with the entire life history of BC Smith, III.

"Golden Cross of Valor: Martian water riots

Triple Cluster Halo of Valor: Asteroid Miner’s Insurrection"

The list went on and on. This was a busy little camper. Smith appeared to have inscrutable credentials as far as his martial skills were concerned, but how far could he be used? Davide quickly did a search for any reports of insubordination. There were none. Excellent, he thought.

Now how about that incident with his surrogate, the Vicegerent mused out loud. The computer obligingly brought up all records on the heresy inquisitions on JD Smith.

"Cleanser Smith was indicted on heresy charges July 15, Year of our Lord 2103. When asked to surrender for voluntary pack removal surgery, the stated attacked warrants Cleansers and escaped into the recesses of the Cathedral’s life support systems. Deep mind probes revealed no contamination of Church doctrine in young BC Smith, III,"

Enter full name of inquiry, sneered Davide sarcastically at the computer.

"... Because of familiarity with habits of the said surrogate, Cleanser Cadet Smith was ordered to assist in reacquisition. Smith was discovered on vent parapets of level sixteen by Smith. Refusing surrender to even his apprentice, Smith was summarily adjudicated and sent to Our Holy Father for judgment. Smith was observed for a full Terran year before contamination clarifications were closed. The child was deacon juror and holy witness to the Cleansing of his surrogate of thirteen years."

Perfect, said Davide. With that kind of thoughtless loyalty, this seemingly invincible Cleanser would be the perfect tool to cleanse the Council of his enemies. With them out of the way no one could interrupt his take-over of the space mineral industry. From this pulpit, he would be able to control the economy of the world.

Keller! he shouted into the intercom, Get me the data on those renegade Cleansers and have our informants make sure there are no leaks. Not that Davide cared about losing Smith, but it would be nice for him to do some damage before he died. It was time for the Church to take its natural role in the leadership of the world once again. Those weak-kneed-morals-minded pacifists were not going to get in his way. The masses were meant to be ruled and that is exactly what he intended to do.

He quickly slurped down the remains of a week’s worth of soup ration and swiveled around in his chair toward his private confessional. Prayer beads clinked against his robes as he trudged his porcine body over to the door controls. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead and the back of fat neck as he fumbled for the electronic latch. Send my wine. He shouted to Keller.

Keller sent in the girl who served as Davide’s maid.

If you please, Your Holiness. she said a tinge of trepidation in her voice.

Her father, unable to pay his tithes, was forced to give his oldest non-adult child into the service of the Lord. She was sixteen. At first she was happy to sacrifice her freedom to serve God, free her family from debt, and get an education to boot; besides nunnery wasn’t that bad any way. Unfortunately for her, an ambitious lower Church official recognized her as an excellent pupil for Brother Davide. He did have a penchant for young servants. As with many new converts, zeal to perform well in the Church was mistakenly faulted for her disappearance. One day the new would wear off and she would return the communiqués and viz-a-phone inquiries.

This would not be the case. The Vicegerent was cruel to his house staff. He routinely beat them for the least mistake. They were treated savagely and worse than slaves. The meager portions of their rations made life miserable and they were not allowed to mingle with the general public nor had they access to any form of media or communication. The ambitious Church official was rewarded with a personal letter of reference from the Vicegerent of the high council. Young Viand Halverson was rewarded with something much different.

There, there my young lady, Davide coaxed, he reached out a finger to poke the vicious bruises around her eye she had earned for leaving a wrinkle in his bed sheets. God eases the pain of the sufferer.

The pain of the touch made her flinch and she spilled the rare brandy smuggled into the Cathedral only for him. For the third time in two days Davide viciously beat her. He was infuriated; his fine silk robe was now stained with the crimson liquid. He beat her with his open hands and fists.

When the girl struck him in the face, flailing to block his assaults, he began choking her. This time he did not cease choking her until her thrashing under his ponderous weight stopped and her lifeless body quivered in its last death throes. Davide slapped her one last time before realizing he had killed another servant. There was a damnable scarcity of good help in this tower. Even the prostitutes were mainly ugly but too well known for discreet disposal.

Keller! he thundered into his altar intercom. Recognizing the location, Keller responded in person. Get me fresh robes after you dispose of this.

Davide knew his menial would release her body into the atmosphere. At this altitude her remains would be incinerated before they reached the lifeless plains of ice below in the form of dust. Davide left the confines of the confessional and crossed the office back to his chair.

Sitting nude in front of his viewer, he awaited the return of his assistant, fresh robes and the arrival of his assassin.

* * *

Star Walker

Najeem Naji

Fall back to the reservoir! He’s cutting right through our guys! We will hold them there…they won’t threaten the water! The warning crackled through the antiquated coms systems they were using to resist the Church’s stranglehold on the rarest commodity on Mars: water. The workers conscripted from all over Earth during the Pure Earth Movement’s interstellar mining campaign had become little more than slaves. Their women and children were starved of it if they could not make production quotas, and the workers barely received enough to survive. They were infuriated and prompted to strike and resist when they discovered the vast stores of water hoarded by the CCC, Pure Earth’s figurehead government, after several successful comet mining expeditions which cost many lives.

Najeem Naji was what they called him, but he had been known by many names. He was a shadow through time. He organized the workers and collected valuable Intel on Earth’s infancy in interstellar industrialization. Now he wondered at the new development. The Church was using psionic capable soldiers to enforce their rule. This one in particular, BC, was powerful and single handedly carving a swath through the ranks of worker-soldiers using telepathic abilities. This would be of great interest to Najeem’s friends.

Group 5, meet me at station 2 … We’ll get behind the regulars and flank that stinking Cleanser! he sprang into action; he had to see this guy up close.

As he sprinted through the vast array of tunnels and sub Martian caves he gathered his forces.

They approached the Church’s soldiers from the back. Remember, use the rubber rounds; as few casualties as possible. We don’t want to have a propaganda nightmare by killing a bunch of Churchies.

They stealthily approached the units beating back the workers. There, in the confines of an access tunnel he could just see the Cleanser whirling and using bursts of telekinetic energy to hurl Najeem’s forces against walls and boulders. The rebels opened fire. Half of the thirty man unit went down writhing in pain from the impact of the non-lethal projectiles. Najeem and his men pushed forward making headway towards the Cleanser. The foot soldiers of the Church retreated through the tunnels leaving only the Cleanser between Najeem and the men and women he had safeguarded for months. His team fired volley after volley at the Cleanser, but the rounds bounced harmlessly off some sort of field he was projecting.

You have betrayed your faith, your God, and your Church. the Cleanser began, You are adjudicated guilty and sentenced to the death of traitors!

Then BC Smith started wading forward through the hail of bullets towards the line of Najeem’s men. He had to do something fast! He rarely used his gift because he did not want to influence events and tech development, but it was clear man was evolving if someone this strong in psionic power was actively using it for the Church. Najeem reached out at the Cleanser with his mind … Just a little push, he thought. Just trigger the emotion of mercy and encourage it in the Cleanser’s mind. Just a little more, Smith stopped. He looked curiously in the direction of Najeem … just a little more. Najeem focused and pushed with as much metal strength as he felt would work but not give him away. Smith paused and looked confused. He again began walking towards Najeem and his men, but now he was not attacking the men; he was only pushing them back with the force which had blocked the fire from Najeem’s men.

Who are you? The Cleanser was looking through the men and through the fire from their seemingly useless weapons and focusing straight on Najeem. Najeem had to push harder. Smith seemed to slow and appeared to be struggling to force himself forward. Najeem pushed again, harder, mentally, reaching with his mind into that of the Cleanser. That’s when he found it. In the Cleanser’s mind, some sort of technology that was having an influence on the thought patterns of the brute.

Where did they get that? Najeem thought, That has to be alien tech, where did they …

Smith stopped. He seemed to respond to someone and then he turned silently and walked away from Najeem and his forces. Bullets were bouncing harmlessly from behind him now. Out! Najeem shouted, Get to the reservoir and we will hook up with the others!

They rushed out of the tunnel and down the voluminous caverns toward their rendezvous point. As Najeem passed the tunnel, the Cleanser went down. He reached out again, just to feel for the Cleanser’s mind. Now that he knew his brain patterns, he could more easily track him.

Najeem’s eyebrows suddenly rose. The Cleanser pushed back. This time he was unable to feel the piece of tech in his mind. Interesting, he thought. Smith had learned from their brief contact. Najeem would have to proceed very carefully henceforth.

They moved quickly through the passages and soon arrived at their home base where the haggard remains of their forces huddled, looking to him for leadership and safety.

Contact the governor he told his radio man, Tell him we would like to negotiate.

Najeem patted his lieutenant on the back, Jackson, I am going to meditate a moment and consider our next move. If we get a response from the Governor get me.

Yessir, Jackson answered crisply.

Najeem retreated to the closet he called home for the past months.

* * *

Contact

In his apartment, Najeem quickly moved to the alcove where he stored his personal effects. He sat on the stool, a rare luxury; he centered a small personal data device on the desk and reached into it with his mind. A flash of light appeared in his mind. The device, though seemingly low tech and dilapidated, disguised a high-tech telepathic projection amplifier created by the Irsols, Walker’s alien allies. He could communicate with his handler from as far away as one light year. A shadowy figure appeared to him; if anyone with abilities attempted to break in on the communication, if they could,