Threshold shift, p.1
Threshold Shift, page 1
Threshold Shift
First Published 2012
Copyright © 2012 by G.D. Tinnams
Cover Design by G.D. Tinnams
Cover image © Algol | Dreamstime.com
The right of G.D. Tinnams to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All Rights Reserved
No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank word wizard for editing this novel.
I would also like to thank Rick Fiore for getting me started.
Most of all I would like to thank my wife Karen for believing in me.
Table of Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Hunter No More - Excerpt
About the Author
For Karen
Threshold
December 3360
Eve of the Uprising
Prologue
Jon couldn't sleep. Just an hour before, he had been immersed in an Espirnet total simulation. The sunlight on his skin, the taste of moisture in the air, even the smell of trees, had all been so vivid, so real. He had been lead sniper in a team of five, hunting down a superior Threshian force with unerring military precision. The Threshians were reptilian, bipedal, both stronger and faster than any human, but nowhere near as smart. His team had been winning until his mother locked him out, insisting he get some sleep. How could she understand that there was no way he could sleep now? The excitement of the game, of the kill, played out in his mind's eye again and again. He had no desire to sleep, his only desire was to return to that jungle and kill more Threshians.
With a restless sigh the boy turned over in his bed, pulling the covers close, burying himself deep inside of them. Even so, he could still hear the tapping of feet downstairs as his mother moved anxiously from room to room. She was pacing again, he could tell by the pattern of her steps. She always paced when his father was out on patrol. Jon couldn’t understand it. She knew his father was the most capable Marshal the colony had ever known. No one would dare to lay a finger on him, so why worry? But she worried all the same, no matter what he or his father said. She had that sort of temperament, as if the worry made any difference. Of course it didn’t.
He rolled over in his bed once more, picturing Jacob Klein as he walked, hand poised over sidearm, through the centre of town. The humans greeted him fondly, as a friend, while the Threshians watched him furtively from the shadows, too afraid to go anywhere near. The fantasy brought a smile to Jon’s face. One day, he mused, one day that will be me, keeping the peace, keeping everyone safe from the Threshians. With that thought sleep finally overtook him, and he dreamt of concussion bolts and burning trees.
His mother shook him frantically by the shoulder. “Jon, wake up!”
Through flickering eyelids he saw smoke billowing in from the open doorway.
“Mum?” For a brief instant he thought he was still dreaming. “What is it?” He mumbled, noting the dirt on her white night-dress, her long red hair untied and flying everywhere as she slammed his bedroom door shut.
“Fire!” she rasped. “Move it!”
Finally awake, Jon sprang from his bed and rushed to the window, typing in the combination that would open it. With the whirr of an internal mechanism, the window opened and the fire escape unfurled itself in one rapid motion. With his thoughts still cloudy, Jon wondered why the alarm hadn't sounded. The window and fire escape should have activated automatically, but they hadn't. Why not? His mother took a tight hold of his hand and led him quickly though the window and down the fire escape's cold plexifibre steps.
Leaving the staircase behind, they ran the length of the garden, pausing for breath only when they reached the far fence. Jon looked back at the house, his gaze met by orange flames licking eagerly at the plexifibre frame. It wasn’t a large house, just two floors square, a triangle tiled roof, but a home, his home, and it was being eaten away.
“What happened?” He asked.
“I don’t know,” his mother replied, almost breathless. “I couldn’t sleep and there was a noise. I thought it was your father, but... I saw the fire. I felt it.”
“But the security system, the alarm, what happened to the alarm?”
Eleanor Klein gritted her teeth. “It didn't work."
Jon found himself staring at the house with newfound fear. He could have died. His mother held him close, shivering even in the heat of blaze. He looked up and saw a tear streaming down her cheek, dimly reflecting the fire’s glow.
Seconds or minutes passed, he was not sure which, when the Beachams arrived. Their property was just on the other side of the fence.
“Eleanor?” the elderly Mrs Beacham said. “Are you all right?”
Jon’s mother smiled bravely. “We’re fine, Jane. But the house, the house is gone.”
Jon felt a large hand clasp his shoulder with the promise of support. It was Ed Beacham. “Come inside,” the old man said. “Standing here isn’t doing any good.”
Eleanor nodded absently, but her eyes were still on the house. Mrs Beacham took her by the arm and gently led her towards the gate in the fence.
Ed took charge of Jon, and he felt like he was asleep again, barely aware of where he was going, only that he was happy to let Ed take him there. A sudden explosion of movement changed everything.
“Threshians!” Ed shouted.
Jon recoiled from a sharp sting to his neck and instantly fell down, his legs no longer working. Ed had fallen too, the old man lying somewhere beside him, still gripping his hand. He heard the faint rustle of leaves, and then a reptilian face was bending over him, the dark green scales clustered around features only vaguely analogous to his own. He had seen the Threshians many times on the Espirnet battlefields, even glimpsed them in the town, but he had never been close enough to smell them. He felt ill, sick and realised with growing panic that he could no longer move, could no longer even feel his arms or legs.
“What a pity,” The Threshian male said through the silver vocoder that hung around its neck. “I had hoped for the Marshal to see your scorched remains. You disappointed me by surviving.”
Jon found that he could not respond, his lips frozen, his tongue flaccid and lifeless within his mouth.
“No matter,” the Threshian said. “I will finish you here. It will not have the same effect, granted, but I’m sure he will get the message.”
The alien withdrew, and Jon’s vision was filled only with the stars in the night sky. He wanted to cry, but found that even that was denied to him. Even if he could move, what could he do? He was no armed soldier in Espirnet now. He was just an eleven-year-old boy. An eleven-year-old boy, he reminded himself, that was about to die. For a time he waited, listening to the distant crackling of the fire. Then the reptile face returned, something like a smile spreading across its thick green lips.
“I will take you to my brother,” the Threshian announced. “Perhaps you will prove useful as a hostage.”
Jon still couldn’t talk, and he desperately wanted to. Not to shout insults or defiance, but to beg for his life and for the life of his mother. His mother, was she to be a hostage too? Or was she...? Powerful arms lifted him from the ground, breaking Ed Beacham’s grip and sending the old man sprawling. Jon’s head swayed sideways and he saw Mrs Beacham in a heap by the fence. Beside her in a wash of red hair lay his mother. In the fading glow of the fire he could not tell if she was alive or dead.
But she was so still.
Jon was slung over the alien’s shoulder, his chin banging constantly against a scaled shoulder blade as the Threshian ran headlong into the night. All the Threshians Jon had seen in the town had emulated humans by wearing clothes, but not this one. This was a Threshian who had no interest in being on good terms with humans, only with killing them. Again Jon asked silently, was his mother alive? He dared to hope she was, but the despair in the pit of his stomach threatened to overwhelm that hope. He needed to know.
They continued through the fields of a nearby Jopo farm, the crops a ghostly curved outline below Jon’s eyes. Then they leapt a fence at least two metres high, the hard landing barely slowing the Threshian down. Jon found himself wondering if the alien ever got tired, or if it could continue forever. Would this ever end?
It was perhaps ten minutes later when the alien slowed to a halt, roughly throwing the boy to the ground as it struggled to slow its own laboured breathing. Jon saw that the Threshian was leaning against the plexifibre wall of a large building, light spilling out from a nearby open door. They had arrived.
“Little human,” the Threshian said as it hauled him up again. “If I had realised you were so heavy, I would have left you.”
The alien walked through the doorway, ducking down as it did so, the door hav ing been designed for humankind. Inside was one large room stacked high and haphazardly with wooden crates. Jon realised they were in some sort of warehouse.
“Daniel?” a vocoder called, the timbre slightly deeper than the one owned by his captor. “Why have you brought this creature here?”
“The fire did not go to plan, my brother,” his captor replied, lying Jon down against a crate. “Klein’s female and child escaped.”
Jon saw another Threshian standing in the yellow glow of a lamp set down upon a nearby table. This one was a few inches taller than its fellow, dressed in faded blue mining overalls soiled by years of use.
“So you brought the child here?”
The Threshian called Daniel raised its shoulders and lowered them just as quickly. “It’s only a child.”
The larger Threshian walked across to Jon, reaching down a recently bandaged claw and raising Jon's head up by his chin. Jon looked deeply into the Threshian's hourglass eyes and blinked. The paralysis was beginning to fade.
“It’s aware of us,” The older Threshian said. “I don’t like that.”
“We can use it to lure its sire into an ambush,” Daniel said. “The humans are just as protective of their young as we are.”
The older Threshian removed his hand and Jon’s head slumped forward.
“The plan was for them to die in the fire,” Daniel’s brother said. “There was to be no connection to us. The Marshal was to be grief-stricken by a horrible accident, not hungry for revenge!”
“This way is better."
The older Threshian struck his brother with a force that sent him hurtling into a crate, the wood fracturing in his wake.
“Don’t you see Daniel? They have proof we oppose them. You even used Haski Darts rather than a human weapon.”
“Good,” Daniel answered. “It is better that they know.”
The other Threshian shook its head in disbelief. “What of the female?”
Daniel regained his feet, picking the splinters from his scales. “I couldn’t carry them both, my brother.”
Jon waited.
“So I disposed of her.”
Jon closed his eyes. No more, no more.
“You have started a war.”
“We can win,” Daniel said.
Jon opened his eyes to find both Threshians staring down at him.
“Crate him up before he can move again,” the older brother said. “You brought him here Daniel, you get to keep him.”
Daniel nodded. “What are you going to do.?”
“I will advise the Marshal that he must surrender to us or lose his child. Perhaps he will even agree.”
With those words, the older larger Threshian limped towards the warehouse door and disappeared into the night. Jon could feel a subtle tingling in his limbs, his toes and fingers almost responding to his commands.
“So, little human,” Daniel said. “How long do you think you have left to live?”
Jon felt a cold resolute anger growing within him. He was long past fear. This thing had murdered his mother.
“I have a wooden box for you,” the alien taunted. “Dead humans like wooden boxes so I am told.”
Jon found that he could almost grit his teeth. I will hurt you, he thought. I will hurt you more than you hurt me. Death will be a long time coming.
Death will be a long time coming...
The thought echoed back to him, as distant as a reverberation in a long tunnel. The voice his own, but slightly different.
I will hurt you more than you hurt me...
Again, the echo, less distant this time, almost his voice, but not quite, not yet.
Before him the alien had discovered a crate that was about his size, and was removing the nails one by one with long curved claws. A moment later it was open, the contents, a pile of condensed Jopo crops, emptied out upon the ground.
“This will do,” Daniel said, brandishing the two parts of the crate in his hands. “I must remember to make some air holes.”
Jon watched helplessly as the Threshian began to walk towards him.
Who are you? The voice asked
“I am Jon,” he said aloud, his own voice finally responding.
“Little human almost better?” Daniel asked. “That’s quite impressive; I wasn’t expecting you to recover from the dart this soon.”
I am Wun, the voice announced in Jon’s mind. We are the same.
The Threshian came closer, setting the crate down beside him. With an outstretched arm it closed a clawed hand around his neck.
“It would be so easy just to snap this,” Daniel said. “You are such fragile creatures.”
The claw opened and the alien stepped back. “Even so, we allowed you to enslave us, steal from us.” Daniel shook his head. “My mother was murdered by a human, how fitting that I returned the favour.”
I remember my mother, Wun commented absently.
Jon’s hands balled into fists, and he took a weak swing at the Threshian, missing by inches, but even if he had struck, he knew it would have been pointless. He was not strong enough.
Daniel snorted. “I can’t fault your anger little one, it feels good doesn’t it? Deserved?”
Jon stared deeply into the eyes of his captor.
Hurt you more than you hurt me.
“Help me,” Jon begged simply. “Help me, please.”
“Why would I do that little human?” Daniel asked.
We are Wun.
Jon watched as the Threshian unexpectedly fell to the ground, its body writhing in a fit of agony. Then, without a second thought, the boy stood up, the last of the drug purged from his body. Coldly and dispassionately he observed the murderer of his mother roll from side to side, its pain continuous and unrelenting. Jon knew that pain came from him. Wun had given him the strength to make the connection, to make it happen.
“Thank-you,” Jon said.
You are alone, Jon, Wun said. You should not be alone. None of us should be alone.
“What are you?” Jon asked.
I am like you, Wun said.
Jon shook his head, hoping the voice would go away. Below him Daniel continued thrashing, his suffering unabated. Jon realised he could kill Daniel now. The alien was completely at his mercy. He tried an experimental kick, quickly followed by another and another. Tears welled in his eyes, his mother was dead. This thing had killed her.
Stop!
He collapsed against a crate, the alien still shaking with inner pain before him. Time slowed as he cried, until finally he realised that he was still in danger. The brother could return at any moment. Rising awkwardly to his feet he rushed to the door. He had to escape.
I am coming, Jon, I am coming.
Once outside, Jon ran, with no idea of where he was or where he was going.
He ran.
Threshold
March 3371
Ten Years Later
Chapter One
Jacob tried to rise from his bed, throwing the duvet and blanket aside with as much strength as he could muster. They were sodden with perspiration, the result of a feverish night of restless sleep. His head spun as he sat up, the colours of his vision running. With a groan, he stood, swaying unsteadily for a moment before taking hold of the bedstead. Even so, the floor appeared to pitch from side to side under his bare feet. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and summoned his concentration.
I am Jacob Klein, husband of Eleanor, father of Jon.
I am Jacob Klein, husband of Eleanor, father of Jon.
The mantra continued, the words accompanied by images of his smiling red-headed wife as she lay beside him, ate with him, hung from his arm as they talked. Of Jon, he recalled a baby crying in a crib followed by the laughing infant boy he chased lazily around a courtyard. He found himself smiling at the recollection, anchored by it. Beneath him the floor no longer swayed, and opening his eyes, his vision no longer swam. He exhaled, letting the tension wash away. He was himself again, but he knew it was only a temporary respite. By willpower alone he could overcome the worst effects of the withdrawal, but only for shorter and shorter periods. He needed more Jopo and he needed it fast.
