Observations - Part 1
Observations - Part 2
Observations - Part 3
This puts us at the start of the story proper, where the synopsis pretty much takes over.
Stranded in Earth's far future by the time machine known as the Kairosille Observatory, a collection of civilians and soldiers pursue a group led by the Fraser Bennett (the original designer of that machine), through the time they call Dawn Four, whilst greedy nations set their eyes upon both.
Also, I should just point out that the word Minevra is not a mis-spelling of Minerva. The pronunciation is min-A-vra. A sound as in Hay.
The pronunciation of Okikate is Ock-e-car-tay.
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01 – Out of Time
‘Remind me, please, of my tolerance for wake-up calls at this hour?’
‘Apologies, Deputy Chief Enforcer, but I have something you’re going to want to see.’
‘This had better be good. Well, what is it?’
‘It’s all in this data pad, ma’am.’
‘You’re sure of this? There’s no response at all?’
‘Quite sure, ma’am. The calculations are fine. I’ve checked everything at this end. I’ve even got a team at Oceanade out to inspect the landlines, but they’re fine. We are getting no readings at all.’
‘So, we’re blind?
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Now, I’m sure you also know never to bring problems to me unless you have the solution?’
‘Well, on that front ma’am, I have good news.’
Alexander Harvey didn’t know what it was that woke him, but the pitter-patter of rain and the ache in his chest probably had something to do with it. He blinked hard, but the world was all outlines of black on shadowed sky. Memories came back to him – the Temporal Chamber, the stun beam – and he tried to sit, but the world swayed like a boat on the storm swell. Flailing in the semi-darkness, his hands happened upon a rock, and he gripped this one stable point in the world for all his worth. He took deep, calming breaths, trying to settle his stomach.
Minutes ticked by, he guessed; little fingers of red and gold streaked through the sky, breaking from behind a mountain far to the east, and he watched the sunrise sweep over green dales and silvery rivers. The light caught in his eyelashes like diamonds.
His squad and the others – that brother and sister, and the operatives, Amy and Stephanie – lay in the dust like boughs struck down in a storm. None were stirring, and he knew he couldn’t risk standing yet. He stared around again. The sunrise peaks steered north-westwards towards the mountains in whose shadow their clearing lay. A bank of cloud rolled up towards a cleft in the range, their peaks lost in the mist. Faint shadows stained the grey.
He wondered where he was. He wondered where Fraser was. He wondered if he felt up to standing yet, but his legs told him he did not. Footprints ringed the bodies, trodden over each other in haste, disappearing down the track towards the north. Their bags and weapons were gone.
Someone else began to move.
‘Don’t sit up too quickly, Mr Goddard,’ Alex advised. ‘Take my word for it.’
Flat on his back, Goddard stared at the sky and nodded. As he slowly propped himself up, Alex saw him count the fallen bodies in the clearing.
‘Fraser Bennett?’
‘Has already departed,’ Alex replied. ‘North. All of them, including that girl. With all of our kit as well.’
‘I wonder who she was,’ Goddard said after a moment.
Others woke; Jon stood, holding his hip. He lifted Rachel to her feet and she swayed as he released her.
‘Where are we?’ she asked, then changed her mind. ‘When are we?’
But Stephanie was already dashing across the clearing at the sound of commotion. Jon and Rachel turned quickly to see Amy writhing on the bare earth. Stephanie and the Squad Leader rolled Amy onto her side.
‘TDN,’ Stephanie muttered angrily. ‘Amy, focus on me.’
Rachel dropped down to help. ‘What’s wrong with her?’ but Stephanie did not reply. Amy did, though, vomiting all over the ground.
‘Temporal Displacement Nausea,’ the Squad Deputy said, joining the huddle. ‘You don’t often see it.’
‘What’s that?’ Jon asked.
‘It means we’ve moved our location as well as moving through time. A big distance, judging by the state she’s in.’ Amy propped herself up, and Stephanie glanced at Rachel. ‘And you’re first question is as relevant as the second,’ she said, letting Amy go. The remaining squad members were on their feet now, joining the gathering.
‘I don’t understand,’ Rachel replied. Amy spat the taste of sick away.
‘You moved time, but stayed at the Kairosille Observatory – same latitude and longitude,’ Stephanie explained, and she stared around at the mountains and dales. ‘We must have moved hundreds of miles…’
They helped Amy stand, Stephanie on one side and the Deputy on the other. She was breathing more easily now. The blonde squad member stepped forward. ‘How long, Aims?’
She fiddled with her chrome watch, the display burned brightly, then faded away. Seconds ticked by in silence and the longer it went on, the more concerned Stephanie’s expression became.
‘Okay,’ Amy said eventually, ‘I’ve got a pos. It’s working on the displacement calculation now. Latitude forty-nine point two degrees north by longitude one hundred and twenty-three point one degrees west.’
Stephanie scratched her head but the youngest squad member, the dark haired, shy man, answered, speaking his words to the dales beyond. ‘Over a thousand miles due west-south-west of Terdanis.’
They waited minutes for the next part. Jon and Rachel started getting restless, staring around and exhaling nosily through their noses. The Squad Leader appraised them, the Deputy narrowed his eyes, and Rachel squared her shoulders. Jon whispered something to her, and she looked away.
The watch beeped, Amy stared at the answer, closed her eyes, and pressed a button on the display. A synthesised voice read the answer she could not bring herself to.
‘Variance between current temporal co-ordinates and Temporal Beacon as follows; two hundred and nineteen thousand, eight hundred and thirty three standard solar intervals. Exact date by local calendar, twenty sixth day of October, Saturday, year; twenty-one fifty-one. Time; oh six fifty-six hours.’
‘How long?’ someone asked in a hush.
‘Two hundred thousand years?’
Stephanie sat on the nearest rock, resting her head in her hands. ‘Dawn Four…’ she muttered. ‘Why did he bring us here?’
‘No idea,’ Amy added. She was still shivering from the nausea. ‘And where is here?’
Jon stepped forward. ‘But who is he? Who is this Fraser?’ His voice was strained. ‘And all those others? And how did he just appear like that? And Dawn Four? There’s more after… after us? Why didn’t you say that before?’
‘One question at a time,’ Amy pleaded. ‘Fraser is… was one of the Observatory’s founders.’
‘He was the first Director of Observations,’ Stephanie added.
‘But not now?’
‘No, he’s spent the last six years in a Calming House.’ Jon and Rachel both looked confused, so Amy clarified. ‘It’s a place where the mentally ill go.’
‘Oh,’ they both replied.
‘Who was he with?’ the Squad Leader asked. ‘From the House as well? And we would’ve heard if he was out. He must have escaped.’
‘Where are they now?’ the tallest squad member asked.
‘North,’ the Squad Leader said, and they turned to look where he pointed, gasping at the sight before them.
The cloud bank was rolling back, slipping away through the cleft, revealing a mighty city. Elegant buildings filled the slopes, sparkling as the sun caught their wet walls. Skyscrapers jostled for position on the central plateau and some of them were very tall. One in particular was reason enough for their astonishment. Rising on and on, taller even than the mountains, this one spire soared upwards, cylindrical, yet woven all about the exterior with tier upon tier of arcades. Many windows glittered in the spaces beneath each arch. Thousands of them. Thousands upon thousands.
Large steel arms stuck out from the core, supporting a series of platforms more than a mile above the ground, and each was a city in their own right, packed full of towers. Some towers even sprouted from the lower surfaces, so that one hundred storey buildings hung in mid-air.
Above, the vast tower vanished into the clouds once more.
‘Well, that helps,’ Stephanie sighed. ‘I know exactly where we are now.’
‘Where?’ the blonde Squad man asked.
‘You don’t sound very happy about it,’ Rachel observed, folding her arms.
‘Yutengard,’ she said, articulating the consonants clearly. ‘Capital city of the Continuity Republic of Minevra-Okikate,’ she shrugged. ‘Stupid name, I know. And I’m not very happy about it. Minevra have a… reputation.’
Amy’s watch beeped again, which tore their collective gaze from the tower at last. She scanned quickly over what the display told her, then looked up.
‘I can’t connect to the Observatory.’
‘What?’ Stephanie strode forward, pulling her own sleeve back. ‘You’re right…’ The squad checked their own as well. ‘Not even a local connection.’
Jon narrowed his eyes. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ No longer distracted by the city, his head was starting to swirl with questions. And he needed straight answers.
‘It means we can’t go anywhere until we get that Remote Terminal back and deactivate whatever block Fraser has put in place,’ Amy replied, gloomily. ‘We can’t signal for rescue. We can’t even send a message back to Dawn Two, and they can’t come to us.’
‘You got a signal a minute ago,’ Rachel objected.
‘Temporal Beacon,’ Amy answered. ‘Not the same thing.’ Rachel huffed.
‘He’s trapped us here, hasn’t he?’ the tall man said.
‘He has,’ Stephanie sighed.
‘Trapped?’ Rachel demanded hotly.
‘The Remote Terminal,’ Stephanie explained. ‘That device Fraser had with him. He’s locked our way out of here.’
‘Well, that’s that,’ the Squad Leader said.
‘Well, we can’t stay here,’ Rachel said tartly.
The Squad Deputy fixed her with a raised eyebrow. ‘Did you not understand? Unless we catch up with that bloody man, we are stuck here.’
‘Forever,’ the tall one added.
‘What?!’ she bellowed. Startled birds scattered from their roosts.
‘Rache, please,’ Jon tried, but her fury, stoked hot by the incredibility of the last few hours, exploded.
At first, they stared at her in bemusement, and Jon just looked embarrassed, but then she started the fight. She lunged for the smirking Deputy, but his reflexes were too sharp, parrying her away and she staggered. Jon raised his fist, but the tall squad member intercepted his swing.
Picking herself up, Rachel spat and charged the Deputy.
‘Stop! Stop!’ Stephanie pleaded, raising her arms, but the impact of Rachel and the Deputy toppled them both, and Stephanie fell backwards out of the way, crashing into thick undergrowth.
But instead of emerging at once, she vanished completely, leaving a break in the foliage. The fight ended abruptly and they dashed over to peer down the previously hidden slope.
About ten feet below them, dusty and angry, lay Stephanie. Beside her, and Stephanie only saw him as she picked herself up, promptly backing away, was a man, his face pale and fearful. A hole was oozing just below his heart. Close-cropped hair, a high collar, the black boots; Jon wondered if he was a soldier, though he had no weapon.
‘Who are you?’ he managed to ask. His voice was hoarse.
Amy immediately slid down into the hollow, dropping to her knees beside the man. ‘You’re wounded. You need help.’
The rest followed one by one. The Deputy offered help to Rachel without thinking, and she slapped his hand away. ‘Get off me!’ she snapped.
‘Where’s my bag?’ Amy asked, looking up at the top where the Squad Leader still stood.
‘Gone,’ he replied and Amy looked stricken. Stephanie crouched down beside the man.
‘Who did this to you?’ she asked softly, clasping his hand.
The soldier struggled to explain; his breath was ragged and his voice weak. He was on patrol, and this clearing was on his route. There were voices ahead. Five, maybe more. He skirted around for a better look. A tall, thickset man carried a red-headed girl in one arm.
‘Did any of them speak to you?’ Stephanie asked. ‘Did you overhear anything?’
‘Only things he did not understand. ‘Dawn Four… I heard that a lot. What is it?’ His breathing grew laboured.
‘Haven’t we got any water?’ Amy asked imploringly, but the Squad Leader shook his head.
The man spoke only once more to say that, after overpowering him, the strange group set off for the north.
The rise and fall of his chest slowed, then ceased altogether. His blue eyes stared straight up, fixed on the sky he had probably seen almost every day of his life. Stephanie brushed them shut, then stood and Amy did too. The whole gully was silent.
It was an odd feeling, giving a funeral to a complete stranger. Jon and Rachel felt shell shocked. The dead were only seen on the news, and then never up close. Two of the squad turned to leave.
‘A-Are we just going to leave him?’ Jon asked nervously. The Squad Leader looked from Jon to the body, then he and the tallest man set about gathering rocks from above, passing them down in a chain until he was covered. The Deputy riffled through the man’s pockets.
‘What?’ he asked, meeting Amy’s disapproving gaze levelly. ‘It’s only Dawn One that never bothered with money, right?’ and he removed the notes from the wallet. Amy shrugged reluctantly as the group left, then placed the soldier’s insignia on the finished cairn. She jogged to catch up with Rachel, who was lagging at the back with a face like thunder.
Jon spoke to the Deputy in a low voice. ‘Look, I’m sorry about all that, uh,’ he began, then confessed, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’
‘It’s Russell,’ he replied, holding out his hand to Jon and they shook. ‘Russell Goddard. Remind me to keep a safe distance from your sister.’
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