Unity by Carl Stubblefield (epub read online books TXT) 📕

“What is that? Emoji? What’s the middle one?” someone asked from the back.

“I think it’s an eggplant, if I had to guess…” Harmony piped in.

“Enough of this!” Darik bellowed, using his foot to wipe away the characters, stirring up a cloud of dirt in his fervor. The remaining Crew laughed at his discomfiture, secretly glad that they had all survived relatively unscathed.

“Darik, can you make a portal back to the manor?”

“No. Don’t you think I would ‘ave done that already if I could? I don’t have a good enough idea about the manor’s location to travel from here to there. I need to know both endpoints clearly and distinctly. I’m not remotely close at the manor and that should tell you how much less this point is in the middle of nowhere. Even if I did, I could only bring one person through at a time, then it’d bottom me out, and we’d have to wait at least four hours before we could bring another person through.”

“What about a smaller jump to a portal, then we could gate back to the manor?”

Darik puckered his lips and bobbed his head back and forth.

“Now that may be do-able. Though what I could create is less a portal than a skipping jump. I’d need a direction though, and I think we’re far enough from civilization that we lack the necessary landmarks. I only have a limited amount of MP for jumps and they would need to be precise with a group this large, if we all wanted to make it there without waiting forever for recharges.”

“Are the comms functional? Can we send out a signal?”

“Unfortunately no, captain,” Grimdark drawled in his thick Romanian accent. “We lost engines and batteries when we hit trees. It was good fortune that we skip to this inlet, but ship is useless now.”

“I should have expected as much,” Tempest sighed. “Alright, everyone link in team chat. Pulse, how are you doing?”

“I’ve got some pretty good burns from those damn drones, but I’m fine. Wish BoJack was here to fix this up though.”

“You and me both. Anyone else hurt severely?” There were some light complaints but overall the Crew was only roughed up a little. “Pulse, can you send a beacon periodically to notify the others where we are?” Tempest asked.

“You’re not worried about any remaining drones?” Anastasia piped in.

“I look forward to them coming,” Tempest growled. “Maybe we can get some answers. What are your thoughts? Who attacked us and why?”

“I doubt that they knew we were supers, or their tactics would have been different,” Anastasia replied, pulling a strand of hair behind one ear.

“The Oracle warned that this might happen,” Darik added.

“So a remote viewing ability? No one comes to mind with that as a major skill set. Anyone know anything related?” Tempest asked, looking around the group. When no one offered anything new, he soldiered on. “So what we do know is that this awareness does not seem to know who is inquiring, but it does seem to know where or they couldn’t have found us so quickly. Those drones were some of the latest models from what I could tell, so we are looking at someone well-established and well-funded. The fact that they tried to kill us just for knowing about them also is telling. It indicated to me a weakness. A need to remain unknown to be able to do what they want uncontested.”

“So does whoever sent them know they failed?” Harmony piped in from the back.

“I’m not totally sure. Yuki would know; it all depends on how connected the drones are to the network. But if we are having communication issues, I would assume those drones are as well. And that’s good for us.”

“You don’t think they can tap into the satellites and connect?”

“After seeing the firepower those drones carried, I would doubt that they would have much room for the processors needed to manage targeting, full communication, and that offensive capability. My guess is that they were dispatched here and someone will be following them to retrieve them after they have completed their mission.”

“So how much time do you think we have, Tempest?” Harmony said, hugging herself and shuddering in the increasingly cold twilight.

“We were much higher when the drones made contact, so I would estimate eight hours to travel to where the drones found our ship. They probably communicated then, and had contact with the satellite network there, or piggybacked off of our ship’s signals. After we went down, my guess is that they did not plan to end up in an area this remote. On top of that, Pulse destroyed a fair number of those drones, which would weaken their collective signal strength. Anyone arriving to check out the aftermath would need to ping the drones to find out where they ended up. What I don’t know is if they could detect that we were able to retaliate and destroy some drones. If they do, that would change what type of welcoming party we can expect.”

“It looks like only Gus, Aurora, BoJack, and Yuki are unaccounted for, so we have to find them or make it easy for them to find us and get to civilization. We may need to leave a couple of people behind if we don’t manage to find them, then send someone back,” Anastasia recommended.

“I don’t like teams smaller than four, so I hope they’re together.”

Across the lake, Aurora saw the glint of metal in the moonlight.

“Yuki, look.”

“What are you talking about?” Yuki squinted at where Aurora was looking but no recognition passed across her features.

“You think that’s the rest of the Crew?” she asked, voice full of uncertainty.

“Look at the trees, you can see where it came down,” Aurora said, pointing.

“How are you seeing anything out there? It’s so dark.” Yuki continued to look but couldn’t see anything, try as she might.

Is it because she hasn’t put as many points into perception as I have? I probably