Remember The Maelstrom
Josh Sinason
Genre: Sci-fi Romance
Publisher: TWB Press
Number of pages: 40
Word Count: 10,000
Book Description:
A botched investigation into the past triggers a domino effect, thrusting T.I. Agent Amanda West into a race to get home to the man she loves in a future that may no longer exist.
Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/q7SzyIivKXk
Available at Amazon Smashwords TWB Press
Excerpt:
“Let’s go,
rookie.” I set my blaster on stun. “I want to be home in time for dinner.”
Corporal Winger
nodded and drew his gun.
I noticed his
hand shake. That should have been my first cue something was wrong. He clutched
his gun so tense his knuckles turned white. This was his first op, and it
already went way far south way too soon. This was just supposed to be a routine
run: bring back a fugitive who had bolted through an unauthorized time portal.
We were the closest ship to it. He was just one guy, but he had a gun. Who
would have thought things could’ve gone so wrong?
I kissed the
scar on my right hand before we chased him through Central Park in the year
2014. It was a silly ritual, but when I found myself far from home, I started
to get superstitious. On cold nights, when time, space, and a universe kept me
away, I’d look at that scar and think about Parker.
Winger was a
hair faster than me catching up with our time jumper. Maybe if I’d been there a
second or two sooner I could have stopped him, but I arrived just in time to
watch him aim his gun. I was just within view when our jumper pulled in a
hostage, a little girl, something that would’ve made any experienced agent hold
his fire.
Winger was just
reacting on instinct. He didn’t pull
back in time, and the guy held the kid in front of him. The scene played out in
slow motion. Maybe Winger thought he could make a head-shot on the perp, or
maybe he just fired in the heat of the moment; we were both tired. All I knew
was, as the girl and our jumper fell to the ground, the look of horror on
Winger’s face didn’t last long.
I’d never seen a
person fade from existence before, not until that moment. The theory, according
to Temporal Investigations, was that one dies before actually disappearing
completely. Sheer shock and horror was the killer, like falling off a tall
building. But Winger looked me in the eyes the entire time, silently pleading
for help as he faded right in front of me. I reached out to grab his hand, but
it vanished, and that’s when I noticed my scar begin to ghost.
I didn’t know
who that little girl was. Maybe she had invented something that made the
Galactic Conferences possible, or maybe she was the grandmother of the
grandmother of someone who assigned cores in the Academy, and because she no
longer existed in the future, Parker and I may have ended up in different
course plans. Or maybe she did something at just the right moment, a move in
one direction or another, a decade from now, and things just fell into place
for us. It was impossible to tell what could happen without her influence, but
I feared something was wrong. I could have lost Parker already without even
knowing it.
When I saw that
scar on my hand ghost, I knew it was a sign that the time stream was starting
to realign. We were briefed on ghosting at the Academy. They told us to run;
they said always run back to the ship, flat out as fast as we could. But we all
knew the truth. We couldn’t outrun a time realignment. It would be like
outrunning the hand of the universe.
The moment I saw
that scar flicker, I took off in a dead sprint back to the ship and leaped into
the captain’s chair. As the controls came on around me I felt the hum of the
hyperspace time bubble curling around the ship like a warm blanket. Then, when
I tried to catch my breath, I felt a hot sting in my gut. Our jumper had
managed to get off a shot, and as luck would have it, his blaster charge went
straight through Winger’s ghosting body and hit me in the stomach. I did my
best to breathe slowly, but each inhale felt like razor blades slicing through
my chest. I winced and put pressure on the singed and bloody wound then
throttled up the engines.
“Well today just
sucked, didn’t it.” I looked at the picture of Parker I kept on my dashboard.
We had our pictures taken when we were assigned to The Bartlett. Knowing this
meant I hadn’t forgotten about him...at least not yet. Then I looked to make
sure the hyperspace time bubble had restored the scar on my hand. Yes. I gave
it another kiss for luck. Just lifting my arm sent shooting pains through my
stomach, but I figured I needed a fair amount of luck right about then, so the
pain was worth the effort.
“Just make it
home for dinner.” I clutched the steering yoke tightly. “Just one more trip.” I
forced a breath. “Let me see that everything is all right with Parker. Then let
whatever changes I’ve made to the future do what they will to me.”
“Some time cop I
turned out to be.”
I slammed on the
thrusters hard and gunned the engine boosters through the time jump, but the
inertia field didn’t have time to boot up, so I felt my ribs crack as my chest
slammed against the crash belt and the back of my head bounced off the top of
my chair.
I screamed in
pain.
In flight school
I had experienced what happened without an inertia field. Senior cadets would
watch Parker and I train in the flight deck sim. We’d shoot to hyperspace
without any problems. But every once in a while the cadets would program in an
inertia field glitch just to see how we’d respond to the stress, at least that’s
what they told the instructors. It was really a rite of passage made worse by
the fact that the simulator didn’t have crash belts, so the only way to go was
flying backwards. If it wasn’t for the crash helmets, our brains would’ve
splattered against the cold metal exit door.
“Stupid prank,”
I said, spitting blood. I was bleeding internally. The scar on my hand ghosted
again. The time bubble was weakening already, so I started going over my past,
wondering just how much of it I would forget.
I decide to
listen to my personal logs and make sure everything was just as I remembered.
Hopefully that last ghosting wasn’t a sign that I was too late. The computer
accessed my files, starting with my first week studying for the Academy
mid-terms.
I remembered that
day by the lake on the Academy grounds, fresh in my mind no matter what time
jump I was in. The lake was clear blue enough that I could see the incoming
spaceships reflected in the surface. I had sat there so often over that first
month I could tell how low the ships were flying by the ripples their wakes
made in the water.
I sat near a
tree, hoping to keep my mind on my introductory engineering midterm studies.
Sometimes the Academy felt like a monster looking to swallow cadets whole, but
out there, under the shuttles flying by and the transport ships jumping to
hyperspace like little daylight shooting stars, the Academy grounds felt
peaceful. That day the transports lit up the clouds like purple and red
lightning. I listened to the low rumble of the shuttles as I skipped a rock
across the water. Then I cracked open a book.
About the Author:
Josh Sinason grew up in DeKalb, Illinois, and has been featured in the Two With Water reading series and at DIY-Film.com.
In addition he has won the Creativity in Media award for his work on www.stairwellblog.com
His work has been recently featured in Burroughs Publishing Lunchbox Romance Line and Eternal Press’ young adult fiction line.
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