Shadow Zone Read online

  Shadow Zone

  The Directorate Series Book Seven

  Pam Uphoff

  Copyright © 2018 Pamela Uphoff

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN

  978-1-939746-32-0

  This is a work of fiction.

  All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional.

  Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Except from Black Point Clan

  About the Author

  Other Titles by Pam Uphoff

  Chapter One

  20 Muharram 1405 yp

  Gate City, One World, Empire of the One

  "Yes! Paer's comm reads as being home. But turned off." Ebsa scowled at the screen of his comm. "Eat first, see Paer later? See if Paer's even home? She may have left her comm here and gone back across."

  But most dimensional gates have laser relays.

  Ra'd snorted. "It's almost midnight. She's probably already eaten and is sound asleep. So go wake her up and find out. I'm going to eat, then crash. Remember we've got a meeting tomorrow."

  Ebsa looked around the warehouse. The vehicle bay was empty; Team Leader Acty had returned the last crawler to maintenance before heading for a much deserved vacation. He shrugged and headed back out.

  Bus service was slow, this late. Paer had an apartment in a nice neighborhood, at the insistence of her bodyguards.

  Bodyguards. Am I insane, loving the daughter of the President of the Empire? Out of my league, and I'm not a social climber. But . . . Paer.

  The president's daughter might be a trained, active, directorate agent, and frequently assigned across, but when she was home, she got treated like, well, the president's daughter. Living someplace she could be guarded.

  At least she gets Across regularly, with her medic certification, and no bodyguards allowed. She gets to be just a regular person. A highly talented field agent.

  Maybe we'll eventually be assigned together. Somewhere Across, on a parallel Earth with a different history.

  And at home in the Empire, we'll date and try to avoid politics and social climbers.

  Ebsa hesitated at the corner. Here in Gate City, Paer had a nice flat in a seven story building. A small park across the street, other apartments and a few shops up and down the quiet street. Dark, just a few streetlights, the sidewalk in front of the building lit by the glass doors of the lobby.

  Reaching out mentally, from the street he could sense her familiar glow. Awake, talking to someone.

  The doors recognized his implant and opened as he approached. The elevator whisked him up to the seventh floor.

  He walked out to see Paer kissing a man in the hallway.

  Ebsa recoiled back into the elevator. He reached for the doors as they slid shut . . . then let them close. Staring numbly at the wall while the elevator dropped back to the ground floor. Stupid of me. To have expected anything else. He walked back out to the street and started walking. I'm just a Clostuone. I should have expected something . . . something . . .

  So immaculately timed.

  Right out of a stupid movie script.

  He crossed the street and turned at the first corner, circled the block at a run. He tapped at his mini comp. Video recording, transmission to storage . . . He eased into the little park from the back. Slight movements, whispers. Didn't sound like necking teenagers, so he slid an unnoticeable spell around himself and eased quietly closer.

  " . . . hoping for a big scene. This is pretty much a bust."

  Newsies. The obnoxious sort.

  "Nah, her punching that idiot Offe is pure gold. Pity he kept her busy long enough for the Closey to get away. A tearful attempt to convince the lout to not believe his own eyes would have been amusing."

  They have hidden cams up in the hallway. Or they've hacked the building security system.

  Ebsa found a bench and placed the minicomp for best aim at the group, and taking in the entrance of the apartment building across the road.

  Paer blasted out of the building, looking both directions. "Ebsa? Oh dammit, dammit, dammit!"

  A man, and a frowning woman were on her heels. My rival and one of Paer's bodyguards.

  "Paer, don't be like that!" He reached for her, recoiled as she whipped around to glare.

  "You lying moron. Go. Away."

  He stepped closer, trying to loom over her, and the bodyguard grabbed his shoulder and jerked him back.

  "Damn it, we need more fireworks, can someone distract the guard?" A whisper in the dark. At least three shapes, two with shoulder mounted video recorders.

  "But I love you!" The Lying Moron didn't know when to just shut up.

  "And I don't give a damn. I told you, I have a guy. You are just one of my colleagues that I used to occasionally socialize with. So. Just. Go. Away."

  "No, no. I refuse to give up on you. Just because an old boyfriend showed up and embarrassed you is no reason to throw away what we have."

  "One!" Paer patted her pockets. "Dammit, I don't have my comm."

  The bodyguard lady stepped between her and the man, offered her a comm.

  Ebsa hastily pulled his out and switched it to text only.

  Paer frowned at the comm, tapped at the virtual keyboard.

  Ebsa, where are you. I need to talk to you.

  He grinned and retreated a bit.

  Recording the paparazzi recording it all in the park across the street.

  He stepped to where he could see her face before he sent it. And watched her eyes widen and her lips turn up and part, spread into a grin as she fairly glowed.

  "Ebsa, you, you! Oh, dear One, no wonder I love you!" She charged across the street.

  The bodyguard charged after her, pulling out a flash.

  The three newsies flinched back in the sudden light.

  "You again. Not enough news, you need to create some? Trying to look big, here in the cultural backwater so you can get a job in Paris?" Paer spotted Ebsa and pounced.

  After a nice long kiss with lots and lots of body contact, Ebsa pulled his thoughts back together. Glared at the woman reaching for his comp. "Don't touch. Private property."

  "You have no right to record me!"

  "A public figure on public property? Sorry, but I do. Or are you too small and insignificant to count as a public figure?" Ebsa watched her grit her teeth and refuse to admit it. Then he looked over at the bodyguard. "On the other hand, from what they were saying, I think they must have a cam somewhere up there. Is the hall public space? It's behind security doors. Or perhaps they hacked the building security system, and that is definitely illegal."

  "Why you pathetic little Clostuone. I will blacken your name . . . "

  Ebsa glanced at the minicomp.

  The newsie hissed. "Oops." She swung at it.

  Paer snapped over and snatched it. So fast the newsie was left blinking. She handed it to Ebsa.

  The lying Moron sidestepped the guard, and looked Ebsa up and down. "This is the guy they talk about? A stupid little Closey?" He dropped his shields and started projecting his glow.

  Everyone else raised their mental shields—usually down enough that other Oners would see their magical strength and respect them—to avoid the impact from an unshielded Withione.

  The highest of the Oners—the magical elite of the Empire—this Of
fe person had a good strong glow. Ebsa grinned. Half the special genes of the Prophets that give us our power are actually just cosmetic. I may be just an upstart Clostuone, without a full set of the genes, but I have an unusually high count, and they seem to be mostly . . . useful.

  He lowered his shield and glowed back at the moron. Who twitched, blinked, stumbled back raising his shields . . .

  Ebsa turned a contemptuous shoulder to the idiot as he raised his shields enough to leak only a bit of power.

  Paer was smirking, and Ebsa grinned back. "So. I just finally escaped from an all day debriefing, and I'm starving. Why don't we go out for a midnight snack? Your guards will probably appreciate having an opportunity to sweep your apartment for any pickups." Ebsa steered Paer away, kept between her and the glowering Lying Moron and headed down the street.

  Around the corner, Paer stopped him and put her arms around him. Crying silently.

  He rubbed her back and held her.

  "I thought they were my friends. Then they trapped me like this."

  Ebsa hugged her harder. "No one ever does anything from pure motives. Just because they might have started with thoughts of getting close to power doesn't mean that they didn't come to value you for yourself, once they got to know you. Which just makes them all the more ready to pull dirty tricks to get rid of an obstacle."

  She loosened her grip long enough to thump him. "Stop being so logical. Off didn't care how much he hurt me. It probably never occurred to him that I would be hurt. Probably all the rest of them are the same."

  Ebsa shook his head. "Nah, judge them as individuals. Group guilt or innocence . . . is just going to make your job more unpleasant."

  "Ugg. They're a pack of analysts. They can analyze my middle finger." She shook her hair back and released him. "C'mon, let's find a restaurant. We can both talk all around the classified stuff we can't even tell each other. I just got back a couple of hours ago. Had dinner with my friends."

  "S'all right. There's plenty of other stuff we can talk about. Did I mention we were incubating some Triceratops eggs? Wait till you see the pictures of the hatching."

  "Ohhhh! You know me too well. If you ever get all manipulative, I'll be in real trouble."

  "Tell you what. If there's anything so important that I'd try to get you to get your dad to do something . . . I'll just tell you about it, and you can use your own judgement about whether to just tell your dad about it and ask him to do something about it."

  "There, see? You know me too well."

  The auto café was . . . close, handy, and at this hour, empty.

  Ebsa wolfed down a quick noodle and beef dish, ignoring the excess salt and chemical aftertaste, while Paer nibbled cookies and watched his recording of the baby dinosaurs hatching.

  "Oh, I wish I'd been there." Her comm beeped. She glanced at it. "The guards say the apartment and hallway are clean. Now. C'mon. You can tell me all about Nighthawk and Ra'd on the walk . . . oh, never mind. The ride home."

  The nondescript car pulling up to the curb was no doubt armored and vastly over powered.

  "My place." Paer added. "I may be sent back in three days, so I'm hanging on to you as much as I can." She sighed. "I have a meeting at eight."

  Ebsa cocked his head. "So do I. HQ. Room 820."

  "Oooo. I think we may be able to talk to each other about all sorts of stuff, tomorrow."

  They didn't talk a whole lot after that. They did get some sleep.

  Chapter Two

  20 Muharram 1405 yp

  Scrublands Base, World EH 2946

  Ajha Withione Black Point hated large projects.

  And spying on the Helaos was very definitely a large project. The only good thing about it was that the Helaos couldn't detect the Disco gates. They had five, now. Four to various places on the Cannibal world, and one to the world it appeared to be taking aim at.

  It was the most frightening phenomena he'd ever heard of in a long and active career as a cross-dimensional agent. Ordinarily the once-parallel-and-now-drifting-apart worlds never touched again. Never rejoined. There were some odd worlds they were watching that seemed to be converging with glacial slowness. Becoming more and more alike. Similar people marrying, identical children being born. The same politicians being elected. Historians arguing about two—or more—interpretations of recent history which were all accurate on several close worlds. In theory, they would eventually match so exactly that they would become one.

  The Helios world was something else. Some cataclysm in their past had ripped a piece of their universe loose and sent it careening through the inbetween, and through other worlds. From their reading, those passes had had little noticeable effect, until the accidental alignment of some high tech power storage devices forced a merge between the Helios world and the ordinary one is was passing when the storage towers were activated.

  A second cataclysm.

  That had been no gradual merging of identical places and people. That had been a disaster of appalling proportions, with any similar material snapping into congruence with each other. Just the buildings cracking and falling into each other would have been deadly enough. But everything merged. The people who merged into people survived. Many of them only long enough to be crushed by collapsing buildings . . . Trees, animals, crops . . . the physical world, with slight differences in fault lines, rivers . . .

  Once the earthquakes and fires had subsided, the surviving Helaos had regrouped, and studied the disaster.

  Because a few of them had seen an opportunity. Their ruling council—the Senior Forum was the closest translation—had overlapped and merged with a boys' prep school. The aging rulers had found themselves rejuvenated. Their personalities and memories had swamped the shallow experiences of the more malleable youths . . . and they wanted to do it again, as often as needed, to live forever. The deaths of billions meant nothing to them.

  They'd invented cross-dimensional gates, they'd figured out how to slow the merge so that compatible (but always younger) victims could be selected. They'd murdered four worlds' worth of people. Each time, ripping away that Earth from its universe.

  For a few terrifying months, they'd feared that the One World might be their next target.

  According to the Helaos' own calculations, that possibility has been ruled out. Along with the dinosaur world. Pity, that. It would have been a much more fitting end than the most likely next merge, a thinly populated world with nomadic hunter societies.

  "And there's no civilization there, no cities full of people to pick and choose from." Ajha kicked back in his chair, and eyed his comp. A fit man, early middle age, lighter hair color than most Helaos. He must have merge-killed a blond last time.

  The face of the enemy. The Killer of Worlds.

  "So, ArcHelios Nikostratos. What are you going to do?"

  "That's the big question, Boss." Fean had come up silently behind him. "I just talked to Q. She says to listen for evidence that they might spontaneously merge. She says that would explain their frantic preps. The other merges were twenty or thirty years apart. She sent you a report on the pattern of the Helios' power gate connections. She says their surviving population is small enough to evacuate, and large enough to be a real problem if they pick an inhabited world."

  "Spontaneous merging? One! Maybe if there's a good match up of the positions of all five suns in the Miniverse or somesuch?" Ajha glanced at his watch. "How'd it get so late?"

  "Did you forget to eat lunch again?"

  "Yes."

  "I can't say I'm surprised, but come and eat something." Fean opened the door and held it. Glowering at him.

  "Yes, Mother." Ajha grinned at her expression and stepped out into a beautiful winter day.

  The observation base was on an Empty World—one with no native intelligent species—and primitive enough that there were few animals, including insects. Far enough south that winter was merely refreshingly chilly.

  A permanent gate two kilometers north of the base led to One Wo
rld. A kilometer south of the base, the gates to Helios and the target. The pavilion sported top line autovends, autovats, and fabricators from both Earth and One.

  The food was horrible.

  The camp manager had requested a real kitchen and a real cook, but nothing had happened yet.

  "I've even been too busy for a bonfire. Not that I have any interest in cooking for this crowd . . . "

  Fean snickered. "And no large animals to hunt anyway. I hope you realize how cute it is to see you intimidated and behaving yourself in front of all the bureaucrats."

  "I am not intimidated. I am making sure that we present a united front to the Earth."

  She grinned. "You mean so they don't see you arguing with your bosses until they are reduced to yelling at you?"

  Ajha refused to acknowledge that hit, and punched up something innocuous from the fabricator.

  "I've got about eight reports to read, before the meeting tomorrow. One only knows why they need this one so suddenly. Eh. I hate meetings." Ajha looked over at the Army encampment. It looked like a major inspection of equipment was underway. Does the Colonel expect action soon? Is that what this meeting is about?

  Fean grinned. "Hob is perfectly capable of minding the monitors while you're back home. Just be sure you get back here before the baby analysts return."

  "Umm. Might be interesting, to see if they could take charge and accomplish anything on their own. But I'm not going to experiment on anything this important." Ajha looked at the generic sandwich. Erstaz bread colored to look like whole grain, and a bit lumpy. But not the right sort of lumpy in the rather gooey . . . thing. The filling would taste vaguely like ham and cheese—if one ignored the faint chemical aftertaste. "Will you still work for me if I cry like a baby and beg for a cook and real food?"

  After a sandwich like that he had no trouble staying up late. The analyses were almost interesting enough to take his mind off his stomach. It was well after dark when he took a break and walked down to the vendos. Got something that claimed to be chocolate chip cookies, and a fruity drink. At least the drinks were imported, cold and tasted like they were supposed to.