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= FAR WARS =

a novel in the Empire of Time series

by John Argo

Chapter 5: Corduwaine

15.

The world as we had known it ended not long after that. On a fateful day, I was walking through the busy streets of Trzond, a suburb of Corduwaine, with Zara on my mind. We were to have lunch at a restaurant with lake views, smothered in trees, on a resort island in the bay. As I stood waiting for the ferry, it seemed as if the sky darkened slightly.

All of us strangers froze and looked upward amid a rushing, thundering sound. As inexplicable explosions echoed around the sky, it sounded like furniture being dragged across a wooden floor—but deafening, and instantly punctuated by explosions and red flashes. Smells of fire, burning tar, whatever, violently permeated the air. Smoke drifted recklessly, disregarding normalcy and customary order.

The surprise attack on the Corduwaine system had begun. Kaarrk Swarm legions emerging from deep Temporale transit space smashed through light years of humansh systems, seeking to kill the heart of us, to kill us all and our alienoid allies, or enslave us in yet another Inversion of Humankind lasting centuries or maybe forever.

Unsuspecting citizens all around me looked up with startled, innocent, curious faces. Soon, our expressions turned to alarm, then terror.

Legions of Kaarrk Swarm fighter craft streaked through the clouds over head. Guided by infrasight, they could shoot through cloud cover, by day or night. The Kaarrk swarmed like flies. Each time a new squadron exploded into the atmosphere from space, their limitless numbers spattered like fast-moving grain shot.

As buildings began to topple around me, and the screams of the trapped and dying floated pitifully in the smoky air, I raised my hand to summon my personal holog. Instantly a small image of the Trask lobby appeared in the air just off-center by my right temple. The young men and women staff could be seen bravely staying at their consoles to work the emergency com, even as the building shook around them and lumina fell and shattered on spacious lobby floors.

Running for the nearest pubtrans, I hollered "Override, override, override!" Even with my high Upholder priority I could not get a dedicated spectrum. All hell had broken loose.

The pubtrans tubes were collapsed. I came to a descending stairwell (Trzond) choked with rubble and colorful blotches I took to be women's and children's summer dresses, immobile and gory in the stones.

Kaarrk Swarm attack aerons kept streaking by, and the explosions continued, as did screams on the streets. Howling sirens added to the madness as they kept up an unbroken wail of agony over a suddenly broken world. Tracers rose in to the air. Artillery boom, boom, boomed and the ground shook. Kaarrk arrow-fliers ripped the sound barrier with an unfolding boom that rattled tat-tat-tat-tat as they echoed away over the horizon, only to be drowned out by the next peristalsis of death puke, wave of nausea, tidal comb of terror.

I reached the Upholder precinct at Trask 501 and entered the lobby, after showing my palm holo i.d. to several armed and hysterical elder guards. Trask himself was at a distant resort with his current wife and children, but he was live now on holog. "Take command of the city," he barked at me. "The admin building has been hit—of course—the Swarm took out all the infrastructure. I am declaring you Master of Circumstance." I assumed that meant something important on Tellerine. It did.

"What about Zara?"

"She is assisting her brothers on the flight line."

I spoke the commands to switch holog from Trask to Zara on our private com line.

"My love," she said in the small threevee holog before my pained eyes.

"Come be with me," I said. If I asked anything of fate, I would give anything, but that I wanted more than anything in the world.

"I love you more than my life itself," she said. The truth of her words radiated in her eyes. Behind her stood her brothers wearing flight suits getting ready to board orbital fighter craft. "My heart is in your heart," she promised. "My soul is in your hands. My poor body only has to be here with the fighters. You will be with me every moment."

I couldn't speak, only nod. I loved her more than I loved my own life. So she got busy with the work she must do in support of the air fighters and orbital scramblers. Our first line of defense had been broken, and they were bravely putting it together again one dead pilot at a time.

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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.