Ocean in the Sea Read online

  “B-basement,” grunted the man. “P-parking garage.”

  Heticus raised his hand and the man lifted off the floor to a stand. Pushing him with the muzzle of the pistol, Heticus held him at arm’s length. Nodding to the elevator’s interior he said, “Take me there.”

  His host had no memories of operating a motor vehicle. So far, her only useful talents included speaking and walking. Wonderfully useful, but overall limited in scope, he hoped there was something helpful in her head. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the time to go digging through it.

  Leading the officer into the elevator, Heticus pressed one of the lower buttons, and then directed his attention to the officer’s name tag. It was in German, but the letters were familiar. “Major Detlef Ekkhardt,” she stated. “If you wish to live, you will obey my orders. If you deviate from my commands, I will kill you. I do not need this weapon to do that, do you understand?”

  “Y-yes,” he stuttered. “What… are you?”

  “You will ask no further questions. You will lead me to your vehicle and exit this building. I desire a phone that can call to the United States. You will take me to one. Serve me well and you will live. Fail me, and I will scattered your body parts across this city.”

  Detlef Ekkhardt felt an invisible force shove him against the back of the elevator. His chest heaved with the effort to draw a breath. It felt as if something was pressing with unbelievable power. Just as suddenly, it was gone. He inhaled rapidly. “Yes, yes,” he gasped. “I will do what you say.”

  With a ding, the elevator door opened. Heticus slipped the pistol into the pocket of the nurse’s smock and nodded for the Detlef Ekkhardt to proceed. “I will be right behind you, mortal.”

  Outside the elevator lay a sealed vestibule constructed of bare concrete walls and cross-hatch safety glass. A nearby row of lockers contained emergency environmental suits. Beyond the window, rows of vehicles lined the walls in a huge open chamber filled with massive pillars. Eyeing the architecture, Heticus determined this was put in place after the hospital was built. The building above had been old. This area had received special attention.

  Detlef pressed a badge against a card reader in the door, and then held the door for Aimée-Marie. Heticus put his hand on the frame and indicated Detlef should proceed first. As they exited the vestibule, a man waved at them from behind the slotted window of a pillbox bunker opposite the elevator. Detlef waved back, turned to the right, and walked down the row of vehicles until he reached an aerodynamic black sedan. Pulling a key out of his pocket, he unlocked the driver’s door and flipped a switch to unlock the other doors.

  “Major Ekkhardt,” called a heavyset man sitting in a nearby vehicle. He wore a uniform similar to Detlef, but much less adorned, and with a different rank on the lapel. Speaking through the window, the officer asked a question in German.

  Heticus watched, ready to kill them both.

  “Yes, Lieutenant” replied Detlef, wisely choosing to speak in English. “I was told they had a breach in one of the rooms. A window seal, most likely.”

  “Damn the French, yes?” laughed the man, replying in English as well. “Someday they will learn how to build windows. Do you know how long it will be? I have a meeting with Kommandant Olnstadten at the Zivilschutz bauwerk. He will not be pleased if I am late.”

  “It might be some time.” Detlef shrugged.

  “I see.” The man looked at Heticus and gave her a nod. He switched to French. “I haven’t had the pleasure Madam.”

  Heticus nodded once and said nothing.

  “Ah,” The Captain smiled and winked at Major Ekkhardt. When the wink was not returned, the overweight man cleared his throat and tugged nervously at his collar. “Hot in here,” he commented. “I hope the air filters are not failing.”

  Heticus met Detlef’s eyes and flicked them to the car. She sat down in the passenger seat and closed the door. Detlef did the same, giving the Lieutenant a wave before sealing himself in and wiping a trickle of sweat from his forehead.

  “We can’t leave,” he explained to Aimée-Marie in the safety of the car. “While the hospital is sealed, the airlock doors won’t open. There are guards everywhere. There is no way out for you. But… what you can do is incredible! I have heard of psychics, and of their power, but I never believed until now.” Detlef grew excited. His voice gained in pitch, practically pleading. “Let me help you! Come with me to see Professor Lichtenzel in Braunschweig. Let him examine you, work with you. The things we can…”

  “Shut up.” Heticus turned dull eyes on the man. The reaction was typical. It was always fear or desire. “Start the car,” he commanded in Aimée-Marie voice. It would take some getting used to. He’d been female before, many times, but he despised the gender on principle. “Drive toward the exit.”

  “As you wish.” Detlef turned the key and put the car in gear, puttering out onto the path running the interior of the parking garage. “This will not get you out,” he warned. “There, look.” They approached a large rolling door of heavy plate steel. The guard standing next to it stared that them, his expression confused.

  “Slow down,” commanded Heticus. “What lies beyond that door?”

  “A decontamination airlock for washing the cars.”

  “And beyond that?”

  “Another door, much like this one. And more guards. Even if we somehow get past them, they will radio ahead and inform the Gestapo. Everyone in France will be after you, and there is nowhere to hide. Not in Riom. No one will help you.”

  Heticus looked at the rows of cars and the rolling door. “Stop.”

  The guardsman approached, holding out a hand for them to halt. Major Ekkhardt put the car in park as Aimée-Marie popped the door and stepped out. Raising her hand, she threw the guard into the concrete bunker behind him, projecting him with enough force to crush his body through the narrow window. Forced through the small opening, his blood spayed like a broken water balloon, drenching the guard inside the bunker with bone fragments, intestines, and chunks of ruptured red flesh. Screaming, the terrified blood-soaked man hammered his fist down on the alarm button, setting off a claxon. Heticus snarled and accessed his interface again, jerking the interior guard forward and then throwing him backward. Three times, he pushed and pulled, releasing the pulped remains when he was done.

  “Mein Gott!” bellowed Detlef.

  “Pas de bêtise,” snapped Heticus through the car door. “Don’t get stupid, or your corpse will join the pile.” French, yes, the language was coming back now. About time. Focusing on the door, Aimée-Marie narrowed her eyes. With an enormous boom, invisible force beat into the steel, denting it inward. Another crash followed, this time from the other side. Alternating push with pull, Heticus bent the steel, ripping the door apart. Fragments of bent metal flew past them and halted, hovering in the air for a brief second before flying forward and impacting with more kinetic energy. Every impact took more of the door apart until only pieces of broken plates and bent rods remained. With a flick of her wrist, Heticus sent the shrapnel flying into the decontamination area with all the explosive force of a bomb. Detlef had been correct, the chamber contained guards and workers. At least a dozen lay dead or injured. Past them, the outer door.

  Heticus got back into the car and slammed it shut. “Drive,” he commanded. “Forward, Detlef Ekkhardt.”

  Swallowing in terror, the pale Nazi officer tugged at his stiff collar and shifted into first gear. As they neared the outer door, Heticus began the same push and pull of force, ripping the metal apart. Kinetic energy pulsed like the beat of a drum, attraction and repulsion, vibrating at ever increasing frequencies. A bullet bounced off the windshield. Two more slammed against the driver’s door, staring the armored glass next to Detlef’s head.

  Tearing apart the last of the outer door, Heticus directed its metal fragments and fired them in the vicinity of their attacker. The sound of clanging and chiming steel dimly reached their ears through the reinforced exterior of the sedan. Someo
ne screamed, and the firing ceased. Beyond the jagged rectangular opening, Heticus looked out on a hazy city street cloaked in faintly green toxic mists and effervescent swirling fog. The arm of a gate blocked the way, mounted to a small cylindrical guard outpost where a single horrified man jabbering on a telephone receiver.

  “GO!” she ordered Detlef. “Pousser l'accélérateur!”

  Hitting the gas, the sedan tore out of the garage and toward the arm of the gate. Aimée-Marie gritted her teeth and shoved her palm forward. At the gesture, the guard outpost and the arm of the gate crumpled under an invisible blast of force. Concrete and asphalt exploded from the ground. Ripped free, the sealed guard cylinder tumbled backward and rolled across the vacant courtyard in front of the hospital. The terrified soldier inside pounded at the window.

  Barreling past the destroyed station and onto the street, the car jerked over a traffic block, spraying sparks. Wrestling with the wheel, Detlef straightened, barely missing a woman and two children in full-body environmental suits. As they swerved into traffic, a red light blinked rapidly on the dash. Rubber seals hissed around the door frames. “Warning. Environmental contaminant detected,” stated a computerized female voice in French. “Cabin pressure nominal. Do not exit the vehicle without protection.”

  Shifting to third, Detlef circled a roundabout. Their wheels thudded rhythmically over the cobblestone street. A black delivery van slowed in front of them and two overly long vehicles drove by, heading in the opposite direction. One had a radar dish on the roof along with a collection of antennas. Brownstone buildings stained a corrosive green lined either side of the street. Detlef laid on the horn, trying to get around the delivery van.

  “They will acquire us soon,” he croaked. “When they learn what you can do… when they see what you can do, they’ll send die Panzer, Hubschrauber, mecha – you understand? Verstehen Sie!? you cannot stop them all. Vernichtung. They will kill us both in this car.”

  “Just take me to a phone,” snapped Heticus.

  “Mein Gott, Frau, the only phone I know of for calling outside Europe is in the Ministerium für Geheimdiensts. The Geheimdienst control the occupation of Riom and this province.”

  “Then take me there.” She held her hand in front of her and the delivery van abruptly flew sideways, spinning and crashing into an empty fountain in the middle of the roundabout where it rolled several times. “I’ll deal with anything in our way.”

  “Mein Gott…” rasped the Major.

  “What is in the atmosphere?”

  “Chromium, mercury, chlorine, and radiation,” he replied. “It is from the dump outside the city. It burned a few years ago. There was an accident.”

  “Why are people still here? Why not evacuate?”

  “Riom is too important. The factories here produce triantium for the raumschiff, our starships, and der Fuhrer determined it too costly to move production at this point.”

  “This point in your history,” pondered Heticus. He flung another car out of their way, pushing it spinning over the curb and through the window of a vacant shop. Shattered glass exploded outward at the eruption of a gas main, showering their car with flaming bits of debris as they passed. “I am having some difficulty accessing memories,” said Heticus. “Your language is familiar, but I have no historical context. You speak German. Who is… der Fuhrer?”

  “Der Fuhrer?” Detlef shook his head. “You must have suffered a horrible injury. That does not explain your power though. Or does it?”

  “That is not your concern. Answer the question. Who controls this place?”

  “Friedrich von Krosig is the Fuhrer of Germany and leader of the Third Reich. You know nothing of this? Do you remember the great war and the cease fire?”

  “Nothing. We are at war?”

  “Yes and no.” Detlef shrugged and took a corner, weaving around a tiny car with an enclosed plastic bubble-canopy. “There was never an official peace treaty, only an agreement to end hostilities. That was sixty years ago.”

  “What keeps you from killing each other then?”

  “Atomic war,” he grunted. “Mutual assured dest… Ah! No…” A traffic light ahead of them turned red. Five pedestrians began to cross. Beneath the glass helms of their yellow environmental suits, terrified faces gazed in horror at the onrushing car. Detlef beat on the horn. “Don’t kill them,” he begged Aimée-Marie. Sweat trickled from his brow. “I will drive around!”

  From behind Aimée-Marie’s eyes, Heticus surveyed the scene with complete emotional detachment. He waved the back of Aimée-Marie’s hand, as if shooing a bug. Through the windshield, Detlef watch the five people lifted and thrown to the right, flung spinning head over heels as if pulled by invisible ropes. Their bodies slammed into buildings and cars – broken marionettes tumbling downward at unnatural angles.

  “They mean nothing to me,” said Heticus, regarding the murdered civilians in the side mirror. “You should remember that. I am a God. You are an insect. The intelligent learn to fear me. The ignorant die. How soon before we reach the phone?”

  Detlef wiped his brow and avoided her eyes. “The building is just ahead.”

  The pitch of the engine dropped to an idle. Heticus raised an eyebrow and glanced at the dash. It didn’t tell him much, but technology was so rampantly different in each simulation that he’d become adept at guessing. A blinking symbol appeared in the middle of the steering wheel. The same symbol showed on the dash. “You have lost control over the vehicle,” he said. It was more an observation than a question, but Major Ekkhardt confirmed it with a nod.

  “It was inevitable.”

  The car ground to a halt as a heavy black vehicle with flashing lights spun around the corner of the intersection in front of them. A look in the mirror showed another behind them. More were coming. Sirens pierced the air.

  “Your technology is more advanced than it appears,” muttered Heticus.

  Detlef licked his lips. “Madam, there is no way to override the remote control. We are not wearing suits. We can’t leave the vehicle. Let me negotiate for you.”

  “Negotiate?” She smiled. “Negotiate a surrender?”

  “It doesn’t have to be surrender. Let us call it… an alliance. I am not without influence. I can guarantee your safety, and your payment. Place yourself in my hands and you will get your phone call.”

  “A God bargaining with insects?” Heticus chuckled through Aimée-Marie’s thin red lips. “How toxic is this atmosphere?”

  “It is deadly,” he replied. “Even a few minutes exposure guarantees a painful death within weeks.”

  The police cars came closer, and a flying vehicle came into view. Dropping low between the buildings, the sinister black shape hovered on jet exhaust powering out of four cylindrical pods on either side. Rockets and the weapons muzzles bristled from sliding armored panels.

  A voice came from the dash. “Attention, Aimée-Marie Armendariz. You are to surrender immediately. If you attempt any hostile action, we will open fire.”

  “They know me? The Cameras,” muttered Heticus. “In the hospital.”

  “Yes,” said Detlef. “Cameras and microphones. Not just the hospital. They are everywhere, even in this car. France is an occupied state. There is no privacy here. The Gestapo has seen everything. They have listened to us speaking. By now, they are reporting it to the highest authority, and the Besatzungsbehörde will undoubtedly have come to the same conclusion as myself.”

  “That being?”

  “That you are far too valuable to kill. As I said, let me negotiate for you. We can come to a reasonable agreement, I am sure. There is little choice,” he added.

  “Mmm…,” the woman growled in her throat. “We shall see about my choices.”

  Heticus’ door blasted outward. Ripped from its seals, it tumbled across the road. Fumes from the outside quickly filled the cabin.

  Heticus stepped out and raised Aimée-Marie’s hands.

  Breaking Shelter

  1 AM, Gresham Or
egon. A van and two sedans with black tinted windows drove through the streets of a residential neighborhood. In the front of the van, two agents of the NSA followed the explicit orders of their superiors, despite their reservations as the unknown nature of their passengers, while in the back, Shanzea, Beloris, Perillia, and Valruun, quietly watching the houses fly by through the dark bullet-proof glass. Trusting no one, Senjiita kept his eyes straight ahead, not watching the agents, but feeling sensations only he could detect.

  It was unusual for the agency to ‘transport’ people like this. These were enforcers, the business end of the agency, not chauffer’s, and though they obeyed their orders without question, the presence of Perillia bothered them. Neither of the men worked with blacks, not in the professional sense. Their experience with non-whites was limited to violence and intimidation. Escorting a Negro galled them, particularly here. There were places where Negros lived, and in those places a black agent might serve as an informant, but this was a white neighborhood.

  “Darker than shit out here,” muttered the agent in the passenger seat. His voice was just loud enough for their passengers to hear, but low enough to seem ‘intended’ for his partner.

  “Quiet though,” the driver replied in the same tone of voice. “You could hear a coon sleeping in a woodpile.”

  "I think you're getting your metaphor's mixed up."

  "Could be." The driver shrugged. "Shit happens."

  The agent in the passenger seat nodded. "Shit surely does. How do you feel about breaking the law?"

  "How's that?"

  "Well, this is a white's only neighborhood. Kinda skirting the rules a bit, aren't we?"

  "Sure as hell ain't the first time. Ain't gonna be the last either."

  "You ever escort a black into a whites-only area before?"