The Dark Messiah (The Second Dark Ages Book 1) Read online

  It logged the human who had found the supply closet. Then, the person left for a couple of hours before it triggered the alarms which brought the E.I. online.

  It was in front of Storage Location D.D. 2. The E.I. watched, patiently, as the human stayed in front of the door for three hours before it seemed to disappear off of its sensors.

  The E.I. remained on full alert for another twelve minutes, then it changed its parameters required to wake-up and went back to sleep.

  Never realizing the human had gotten inside a secured room within the base.

  CHAPTER THREE

  South of Douglas Mountain, old Colorado (United States Post-Apoc)

  The three men ate sitting around a small fire. It was a little chilly, but they dared not build anything larger. The stress up at the main house was already getting tense.

  The size of the fire matched the size of their spirits. Small and not much help warming them up.

  Jeremiah looked out at the landscape and blew out a heavy breath. He turned back and nodded to the two of them, “Todd, Dirk, I got to ask, and I’m going to lay it out right up front, I’m staying.”

  Todd, about six foot two inches and thin as a sapling tree snorted, “You know it’s our deaths, right? Sarah Jennifer ain’t going to go down for any man. She will take her size whatever-the-hell-they-are boots and shove them up Childers’ ass, guns blazing before she accepts any of his deals.”

  “Seven,” Dirk answered. Both men looked at him, “What?” He shrugged, “Common size for women, it isn’t strange or anything.”

  “She had you clean them, right?” Todd asked, “Caught you cussin’ around her?”

  “Damn right she caught me cussing,” Dirk admitted, smiling at the memory, “I slipped and popped myself in the mouth trying to pull some leather. It hurt. So, I go off and say shit or something like that. I turn around and there she is, glaring at me like my mom or something. I figured, ‘what the hell,' so I went ahead and let loose with everything I could remember.”

  “Got them all out of your system?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Yeah,” Dirk admitted.

  “So, did you screw up again?” Todd asked, “Just curious, took me three times to start looking around myself.”

  Dirk smirked, “One other time.”

  Todd turned to Jeremiah, “You?”

  “Oh, no.” Jeremiah shook his head, “My mom was hell on wheels about cussing. So, I learned early to treat all women as ladies.”

  Todd nodded in the direction of the house, “That why we all making our last stand?”

  Jeremiah turned in the direction of the house, “No, not for me. Sometimes you realize that when civilization cratered, morality took a beating. Justice died, and ethics took a sabbatical.” He turned back to the two men with him, “Ain’t ever gonna come back unless someone is willing to take a stand.”

  Dirk pointed to Todd and then Jeremiah and finally at himself, “So, the three of us against thirty…or more right?”

  “Well, say it like that, and you make me want to tell Childers he needs to bring another twenty or so. Don’t forget Sarah Jennifer is worth probably ten of those sad sacks.”

  “And her armament.”

  “Have you ever seen it?” Dirk asked, looking between the two men.

  “Her guns?” Jeremiah asked.

  He never got to answer, a call came out of the night.

  —

  Michael had been walking for a day already. It had taken him three solid hours to figure out how to Myst again and go through the damned hole up at the old base.

  At least he had decent clothes again.

  Bethany Anne had provided money. While he kept some, he figured it would probably be useless. He had on jeans, a black shirt, and for some insane reason, her guards had provided him a black leather trenchcoat.

  It did help hide his two pistols, apparently Jean Dukes Specials. He read the instructions carefully before locking them to his palm print. With over five thousand rounds, he figured he would be good for a while. But, he had no idea how often this new world would require … attitude adjustments.

  He practiced with the pistol, turning up the kinetic kick from one to ten and back down. Ten had impressive destruction. John’s note to him explained how the gun used etheric generated magnetic something or other and how the rounds were made to replace them.

  Basically, he figured out, he had a tiny rail-gun in his hand. Technology ahead of its time and probably still ahead of this period, as well.

  Well, he sure hoped so. He was sure that rail-gun technology would be pretty nasty stuff to deal with if it was pointed at him.

  Finally, she provided two Wakizashis and one Katana. He left the Katana behind as being too impractical and kept one Wakizashi, the two pistols, two sets of clothes and scrounged for soap and other stuff pushing it into a leather bag he slung over his shoulder.

  He had no shampoo. He spent an extra hour looking for any damned shampoo, but the base was dry. He passed a mirror at the hour mark and saw his reflection.

  Making a face, he realized the soap was sufficient. He still had no damn hair.

  It took him another two hours to once again attain his Myst form and make it back up and out of the base. He was pushing himself, flying fast, and had made it halfway down the mountain when he suddenly dropped out of Myst form. This resulted in an ass over appetite, arms and legs flailing, tumble down the slope. He traveled more than a hundred yards, introducing himself to hundreds of small rocks and stones and bouncing off of one damned large rock in the process.

  He laid for a minute, just muttering “OOOOwwwww” over and over again.

  Finally, he turned over and stood up, trudging back up the hill, grabbing his bag and thought about why he was having trouble with skills he had honed over a thousand years.

  “Focus,” he muttered, “It’s got to be the focus.” Some time later, he saw the campsite, the tiny fire burning like a lighthouse beacon for him.

  —

  “Helloooo the fire!” a strange voice called out.

  Jeremiah, Dirk, and Todd all turned towards the voice, Dirk sliding out about twenty feet into the trees off to the side.

  “Not looking for trouble, guys,” the voice called to them. “Just looking to make a difference and get some questions answered. May I approach?”

  Jeremiah called back, “Who you with, stranger?”

  “Just myself, I recently landed in these parts,” the voice called back.

  “C’mon in, but behave yourself.” Jeremiah allowed, “we ain’t got much, but what we got, we will share.”

  The man entered the dim light of the fire, and Jeremiah’s eyebrows went up. He was damned handsome, didn’t have a lick of hair on his head nor could he see any scars on the man.

  And he carried himself like a warrior.

  “You can come out of the tree’s, Dirk,” Jeremiah called out, “If he was here to harm us, I imagine he might have already done it.”

  Todd looked over at his friend, “and you say this because why, the black coat?” He turned back to the stranger, “no offense, the black leather is impressive. But Jeremiah here,” he threw a thumb back at his friend, “is way too impressed with clothes. He was indeed born in the wrong age.”

  “No, jackass,” Jeremiah replied, and pointed to the stranger, “Because he balances like a cat, he’s got at least one pistol I’ve seen and something else underneath that coat. I’d guess a sword. He knew where,” he pointed to the trees where Dirk was just becoming visible as he returned, “Dirk went, and he wasn’t bothered by coming right up to us. So,” he turned back to the stranger, “is it just you, or do you have another out there waiting to come in?”

  “No,” the stranger told them, “it’s just me. I overheard what you were talking about, so I have a basic understanding of what you are up against. So ... I thought I might see if it is a fight I care to join.”

  “Let me get this right,” Dirk scratched his nose, “you, mister, want to join the three of us,” he pointed to his friends, “and one lady you haven’t met against thirty to forty guns?”

  “You said she was worth ten herself, right? Doesn’t that leave, at best, ten for each of us?” The stranger asked in a no-nonsense voice, “I don’t know about you guys, but in my time, we tended to pride ourselves on being better than the ladies.”

  Todd’s mouth dropped open and he butted into the conversation, “Stranger, you got a name?”

  He turned towards the man, his calm eyes seeming to bring the temperature down a moment, “yes, it’s Michael.”

  “Well, Michael,” Todd continued, a little less boisterous, “unless you have been in the FDG, you might have a small problem with Sarah Jennifer. I’ll be willing to bet you a boot cleaning…”

  “Excuse me, a what?” Michael interrupted, “A boot cleaning?”

  “Ahhh,” Jeremiah tried to explain, “it has less to do with money and more to do with embarrassment. No one likes to lose a bet and be made to clean boots, it’s humiliating.”

  “And the FDG?” Michael prompted.

  “You from another country?” Dirk asked, “You never heard of the FDG?”

  “Can we pretend I’m from another time and leave the real history out of it?” Michael asked, pushing a little soft velvet over steel tones into his voice.

  All the men agreed that was a splendid idea.

  Michael mumbled as he looked around the area, “Glad to know one damned thing still works.”

  “The FDG,” Dirk answered, “is Force de Guerre. They started over a century ago. They come in, they kick ass, they leave. Made up of a lot of damned impressive people. Many are really strong, or really fast. They try and keep a little normalcy out here in the Fallen Lands.”

  Michael bit his tongue, he would follow up on that term, later. “So, they are the police force?”

  Todd and Jeremiah both snorted, “I wish,” Jeremiah answered, “if we had a police force, the three of us wouldn’t be rushing forward to die.”

  Michael’s eyes narrowed, “And why do you think you are going to die?”

  “Because chivalry,” Todd answered, eyeing his friend, “makes us dead.”

  Michael raised an eyebrow, “Oh, then I definitely want in on this.”

  “Why, you have a death wish?” Dirk asked, amusement coloring his voice.

  “No,” Michael told him, his voice going cold, “I just have something against those who would wish a woman dead.”

  —

  Sarah Jennifer looked out over her yard, her dark, vacant yard, and snorted.

  Not one.

  Not one damned man decided to stick with her. Well, except for Jeremiah, Todd, and Dirk. She knew why the guys actually stepped off the property here by the house. It was easier for the other dickless dirtbags to put their tail in between their legs and run away.

  She turned and entered the house. What was done, was done. She wasn’t going to change anything by screaming in annoyance when it was her feelings that were hurt, not her concern with dying.

  Her old Merc leader, TH, had told her one time, you do what you got to do. Most of the time, it will come out alright. Occasionally? Well sometimes it might come up snake-eyes, and you just hope that when you close your eyes a final time, you can be proud of yourself.

  That was over ten years ago. She considered what she had built out here in the Fallen Lands and found it good. She’d helped over a hundred souls through the years and pulled a few out of a bad future. Now, she had three who were willing to walk into Purgatory with her.

  She stopped in the kitchen and started the coffee water to boiling on the old pot-bellied wood stove. It helped heat the house and warm the body.

  And hopefully, the soul, when all of this was done.

  “Hellooo the house?” a strange voice called out.

  Sarah Jennifer turned towards the door leading outside. She pushed the coffee pot off the central heating area and walked towards the back of the house, grabbing a rifle on her way.

  It would be stupid not to be careful.

  She took a sidestep into the viewing room beside the door and looked out. In the faint light, she could see her three guys up on their horses, surrounding a tall man in a black trench coat, the light reflecting off his bald head. He was looking at the yard and the apparent lack of activity for such large buildings, the horse stables mostly empty.

  Bastards had even taken the horses she had provided them.

  With her men behind him, she considered it safe enough. She set the rifle down and walked around to the door, opening it and stepping outside.

  —

  Michael looked around his lip twitching. He could see the signs that there should be at least another fifteen people minimum here right now.

  All this woman had was the three guys behind him and now, him.

  Seems like the other side might need to bring another thousand if they wanted a shot at this.

  His cold eyes turned back towards the house when he heard the slight grating of wood on wood. He caught the motion and saw the concealed area she was using to check him out.

  Him and his bald head, he frowned. How very Yul Brynner of himself.

  Fortunately, the bastard nanocytes that had his hair wrong didn’t consider his eyebrows too. He was having enough of a problem dealing with his chrome dome up top. If he didn’t have his eyebrows, he might decide it just wasn’t worth living any longer.

  He snorted, perhaps Bethany Anne was right. Just a little.

  He could be rather vain.

  He could hear her close the viewing door and move around. The main door opened up a second later, and an attractive, and a slightly older, woman stepped out. Her figure cast in shadows with the lights around the yard.

  She nodded to the men behind him and then, spoke to him.

  —

  “Mister, can I ask why my guys here are bringing you around? I can only trust that these miscreants informed you we expect to be attacked tomorrow?”

  “Blunt,” Michael replied.

  She raised an eyebrow, “Do you have a problem with blunt?” His little smirk annoyed her, “Do you?”

  Michael pursed his lips, “I don’t. I doubt you can be blunter than a couple of women I know.” He thumbed at the guys behind him, “And, these men did inform me that there was going to be a little activity here tomorrow.”

  She threw an annoyed glance over at Jeremiah.

  Jeremiah put up his hands, “Hey! I told him the details. He said he wanted to come along.”

  Sarah Jennifer stepped off the porch and started her way towards Michael, “And what details would that be, Jeremiah?”

  Before Jeremiah could answer, Michael replied. “Probably forty, maybe fifty guys coming here to burn down the place, take you whether you like it or not and the expectation they will all end up dead.”

  Sarah Jennifer threw a glance at the guys. Dirk leaned forward as he sat on his horse and hissed quietly towards Michael, “Way to go get her pissed off!”