Time Shards--Tempus Fury Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Novels by Dana Fredsti and David Fitzgerald

  Title Page

  Leave us a review

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  Novels by Dana Fredsti and David Fitzgerald

  The Time Shards Novels:

  Time Shards

  Shatter War

  Tempus Fury

  Also by Dana Fredsti

  The Lilith Novels:

  The Spawn of Lilith

  Blood Ink

  Hollywood Monsters

  The Ashley Parker Novels:

  Plague Town

  Plague Nation

  Plague World

  A Man’s Gotta Eat What a Man’s Gotta Eat

  LEAVE US A REVIEW

  We hope you enjoy this book – if you did we would really appreciate it if you can write a short review. Your ratings really make a difference for the authors, helping the books you love reach more people.

  You can rate this book, or leave a short review here:

  Amazon.com,

  Amazon.co.uk,

  Goodreads,

  Barnes & Noble,

  Waterstones,

  or your preferred retailer.

  TEMPUS FURY

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785654565

  Electronic edition ISBN: 9781785654572

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: June 2021

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2021 Dana Fredsti and David Fitzgerald. All rights reserved.

  Visit our website: www.titanbooks.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Did you enjoy this book?

  We love to hear from our readers. Please email us at [email protected] or write to us at Reader Feedback at the above address. To receive advance information, news, competitions, and exclusive offers online, please sign up for the Titan newsletter on our website:

  TITAN BOOKS.COM

  DEDICATION

  Heartfelt special thanks to everyone

  who helped us with our move from SF to Eureka.

  We could not have finished this book—and kept our sanity—

  without your support.

  We love you all.

  Imagine time seen as a continuum—an infinite line containing everything that was and everything that will be…

  Time perhaps as a tangible object. One that can be touched, like a mural on a wall that stretches infinitely in both directions. Portraying everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen. In one direction is the future unfolding. In the other direction the past, much of it forgotten, back to the beginning of time itself.

  Finally, imagine time as a stained-glass window. The story of everything laid out in a glittering mosaic of trillions upon trillions of moments, from the big bang to the fiery death of the universe.

  Until it shatters, and these shards of time come back together—but no longer in the same configuration…

  This is the world after the Event.

  1

  Exultationist–Gestaltist Disputed Territory

  Outside the village of Horváth, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén Republic

  (Formerly Northeastern Hungary)

  July 18, 2216

  Three years before the Event

  There had been twelve soldiers in the squad three days ago. Now there were seven.

  In good formation, they cautiously made their way up the footpath between meadows and vineyards, toward the village. Here and there locals tended the vineyards, showing little interest in the newcomers. A cursory scan revealed no hostility. The mountainous landscape was green and lush, as if unchanged for centuries—aside from a trio of boxy robot shepherds tending a flock of sheep.

  Sergeant Myfanwy Cochrane breathed in the crisp fresh air, admiring the view, trying hard not to think of all the burnt-out cityscapes she had marched through over the years. In places like this, however, the forgotten nooks and crannies of the world, she could almost believe they had found an oasis from the decades of endless world war.

  A deserter’s dream, she thought, careful to mask it from her subordinates.

  “Sarge, we have contact.”

  An incoming thought from Peters, their point man, interrupted her reverie. At the top of the rise, where an ancient tavern stood and the cobblestone streets of the hamlet began, a quartet of village elders awaited their arrival. Cochrane halted the squad and signaled Peters to hold up. She turned to her comm specialist, Silva, who was also her best diplomat.

  “Silva, go talk to them,” she sent. “Bradley, go with him.”

  The two soldiers cradled their carbines, attempting a less confrontational manner, and approached the elders. Bradley, one of the squad’s two sweepers, was a talented esper. He’d already be telepathically scanning the four villagers.

  “Jó reggelt kívánok!” Silva greeted them with a friendly wave. He spoke very little of the local dialect, but had made a point of learning a few basic pleasantries. It was polite to speak aloud before initiating a telepathic conversation with a stranger.

  After a few minutes, Silva and Bradley shook hands with the locals, and the comm specialist stepped away, wavi
ng down to the squad.

  “What’s the story, Silva?” Cochrane asked.

  “Outstanding,” Silva replied. “We have good, better, and best news, Sarge. This place is called Horváth, and they say they’re unaffiliated with any factions. We and any other Gestaltist troops are welcome to stay here as their guests. They also told us the Exultationist main force left here two days ago, headed over the border, to which they say good riddance.”

  She nodded in approval. In this case “the border” meant the border with the Mátra-Slanec Federation, formerly a chunk of southern Slovakia.

  For the last one hundred and fifty years Europe, like the rest of the world, had dissolved from nation-states into a patchwork of petty fiefdoms. No, Cochrane corrected herself. Patchwork was the wrong word—that would imply there were still large centralized territories left. The world was now a mosaic of tiny local authorities. Various psionic factions had taken up the mantle of governing—or at least raising armies.

  Not surprising that the locals didn’t take to the Exultationists. That faction was one of the most notorious of the PsiPremicists—to them, the non-psychic minority weren’t just second-class citizens, they were outright chattel. Evolutionary has-beens no better than animals.

  The only factions that treated the non-psionic worse were the Vorax, psychic vampires that happily fed on them, and the Ouroboros, the psionic hive mind spreading across Asia like a pandemic. Their Gestaltist PreCogs had warned that the Ouroboros sought to absorb the mind and personality of every person on Earth. These people in Horváth didn’t know how lucky they were.

  “Sarge…”

  She glanced at her second sweeper specialist. He was staring intently down at the villagers tending to the vineyards on the hillside below.

  “What is it, Dee?”

  He turned to her, fear in his eyes.

  “Sarge, I scanned again for hostility, deeper, just in case, and— I’m not reading anything. They’ve been hollowed!”

  The field hands had been brainwiped.

  Cochrane whirled and sent to the entire squad.

  “Ambush! Shields up!”

  Not a millisecond too soon. Automatic weapon fire erupted from the upper windows of the tavern and the closest buildings. The spray of bullets ricocheted off their telekinetic shields, illuminating them with a ghostly glare.

  Silva and Bradley turned to take cover, but the four villagers—or whatever they were—dropped their psychic masks and went on the attack. Both soldiers stiffened, faces locked in a rictus, and then crumpled.

  Hitting the ground, the squad opened up with their spindle-fed TK assault carbines, but the ambushers had raised their telekinetic shields. Peters, still on point, low-crawled closer to the outlying buildings, but didn’t bother trying to blast through their shields. A highly rated pyrokinetic, he just focused his attention on first one roof, then the other, igniting a blaze on both.

  The rest of the squad focused their fire on the quartet, but their shields held, disk shapes glowing bright with every impact. The four turned to face them. Suddenly Peters grabbed his head and writhed in pain, dropping and curling into a fetal position.

  Then Cochrane was hit.

  ///the sun exploded

  ripping the skin of the shrieking

  sky apart in a violent, pulsating

  nightmare///monstrous

  disembodied human eyeballs bubbled up

  through the leprous ground

  and began devouring

  Kwame their heavy gunner///his screams

  echoed and reverberated infinitely

  in her ears///while his body went twisting

  and stretching into impossible

  shapes until his torso

  burst open///torn inside out like a pulpy

  fruit mangled by a raging lunatic god///

  Cochrane fought to regain control of her hijacked senses, but the sensory onslaught was overpowering—

  ///the sky plunged

  into a crushing hopeless black

  night///abandoned by stars///the

  haunted moon

  a howling death’s head

  staring down on the ring

  of grinning corpses

  surrounding her///their faces

  melting into grave rot///they

  reach for her

  stretching forth horrid

  grasping hungry cadaverous

  clawed hands///covetous

  of her naked warmth///

  Her resistance slipped as the telepaths reached down into the amygdala region of her brain, triggering the emotional center. Forcing herself to remain calm, she tried to concentrate on the location of her four opponents, even as she felt them twisting the knife in her mind—

  ///a cyclone of a million

  fractaling razor blades flailing

  through banshee winds///

  ripping through her flesh

  ///face///stomach///fingers///

  everywhere merciless

  and unstoppable///

  slicing her body

  in a universe of pure pain///ten

  thousand bloody

  wounds made of her///

  Cochrane screamed in agony. She struggled to stay alive long enough to pour all her mindfulness into one last telekinetic burst—if only she could—

  ///she was falling///

  ///she was on fire///

  ///she was a newborn baby

  being eaten alive

  by her own mother///

  A sudden violent wrenching. The ground gave a single, quick, booming jolt, and then the pain vanished.

  So did the flashing hellscapes.

  The sergeant found herself on her knees, fingers dug deep into the turf, limbs shaking, body covered in sweat. She looked at the enemy. Her telekinetic attack had succeeded. She had reached around their line of protective shields and pulled apart the wall of the burning tavern—it had smashed them like a giant flyswatter.

  Behind the smoldering slab the two closest buildings were engulfed in flames. Inside them, shooters screamed as the fire took them. Then the sounds stopped. No other hostiles in sight. It was a quiet day in the beautiful countryside again, save for the crackling of burning wood and the heavy breathing of her soldiers.

  Meyers, their squad medic, ran up. Cochrane waved her away.

  “I’m fine,” she said in her crisp British accent. “Check Peters and Kwame.” She turned to Dee. He was kneeling on the grass, his face slick with tears. The barrel of his pistol was in his mouth.

  “Dee?” she called to him. After a few heartbeats, he slowly pulled the gun away.

  “How long?” he croaked.

  “Dee? Are you okay?”

  He stared blankly. “How many years was I gone?”

  “Fight’s all over. Only lasted a few seconds.”

  He shook his head. “No, it was decades… I grew old and feeble in there…”

  Meyers went over to the esper and crouched beside him, touching her fingers to his temple, talking to him gently while she mentally ran diagnostics. After a minute or two, she returned to Cochrane.

  “He’ll be alright. It’ll just take a little time to shake off the effects.”

  “How are the others?”

  “Silva and Bradley are dead—hostiles crushed their hearts before they could get their blocks up. Peters is shaken, but I think he’ll be okay.” She looked over at Kwame, their heavy gunner. He was standing stock still, his spindle-fed cannon dangling from its straps and his blank eyes rolled back. Turning back to the sergeant, she shook her head.

  “Kwame’s left the building. I can put some suggestions into his lizard brain to keep him marching with us, but he’s hollowed.” Meyers handed over three dog tags.

  Sergeant Cochrane nodded. Walking killed in action.

  “All right,” she sent out to what remained of her squad. “We still have three klicks to go to get to the bunker. Quick sweep up top to secure the area, and then we’re on the move again. Dee, you back w
ith us?”

  He wiped his face with the back of his hand, nodded.

  “Good. You’re on double duty now—comms and sweeper. Stay sharp, everyone.”

  The squad’s survivors moved out. Below, the villagers continued tending to the vines, industrious as bees, oblivious to the world.

  * * *

  When they finally reached the hatch of the spindle bunker, Cochrane breathed a silent prayer of thanks to the Corps of Engineers. It was right where the map indicated it would be, freshly planted and camouflaged. Bending down, she uncovered the square slab of nanowoven ferroconcrete, and mentally asked Dee for the combination.

  “Cerulean Lemniscate Anticlockwise,” he responded.

  Cochrane pictured a deep blue infinity symbol and set it gently in motion, spinning right over left as it hovered above the hatch.

  “Zinnober Triangle Inverted.”

  She set the image of an upside-down chrome green triangle next to the little spinning blue propeller.

  “Topaz Pentagon Clockwise.”

  Last, she added a yellowish-brown gem-toned pentagon, spinning opposite to the infinity sign. She held all three shapes in her mind’s eye.

  The hatch made a sharp clack, unlocked, and began to sink. It descended fifteen centimeters before halting with a second clack, and slid away into a recess, revealing a narrow stone ramp. A line of tiny pale blue fluorescent lights, like helpful fireflies, showed the way. The remnants of the squad trudged down, exhausted and grateful.

  At the bottom of the ramp lay the recharge chamber, dominated by the bunker’s spindle—its psionic power generator—hovering silently in the air between floor and ceiling. It was a black, elongated diamond structure with a hexagonal cross-section about sixty centimeters wide in the middle, tapering to a tiny flat hexagon at either end.

  As the spindle sensed their approach, it activated with an almost imperceptible hum, slowly beginning to spin and flickering to life. Pale traces of lightning began to dance in its smoky crystalline interior, growing to an incandescence that suffused the entire generator with light.

  The squad’s assault carbines and powered equipment operated on psionic batteries as well. Each soldier unclipped their weapon’s smaller spindles and spares, placing them close to the mother spindle. They hung in the air like crystal ornaments, orbiting the generator as they recharged.