War of the Wild West (eBook)
a TIME DEFENDERS action
eBook Download:
EPUB
2020
|
1. Auflage
476 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-3527-4 (ISBN)
476 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-3527-4 (ISBN)
The temporal war between the Council of Time Defense and the alien warlord Klomtoo has reached a new and deadly battlefield on the American western frontier, circa 1866. Now, as their younger selves face the overwhelming might of an armada of time-traveling warships, August and Mrs. A must undertake a perilous journey, beset by dangers at every turn, to find the one piece of technology that might avert a Timeline disaster!
Imagine that you can travel through time, and that you can meet your great-Grandparents and your great-Grandchildren, because THEY can travel through time, too ... MEET THE ATHERTON FAMILY. Ambassador Bartolomea Atherton - a.k.a. 'Mrs. A' - along with her great-nephew August, and their family members and other associates on the Council of Time Defense, have a huge responsibility: they have vowed to defend the Timeline against those who attempt to change it, in their quests for wealth, power, and revenge. The temporal war between the Council of Time Defense and the alien warlord Klomtoo has reached a new and deadly battlefield on the American western frontier, circa 1866. Now, as their younger selves face the overwhelming might of an armada of time-traveling warships, August and Mrs. A must undertake a perilous journey, beset by dangers at every turn, to find the one piece of technology that might avert a Timeline disaster!
Imagine that you can travel through time, and that you can meet your great-Grandparents and your great-Grandchildren, because THEY can travel through time, too ... MEET THE ATHERTON FAMILY. Ambassador Bartolomea Atherton - a.k.a. 'Mrs. A' - along with her great-nephew August, and their family members and other associates on the Council of Time Defense, have a huge responsibility: they have vowed to defend the Timeline against those who attempt to change it, in their quests for wealth, power, and revenge. The temporal war between the Council of Time Defense and the alien warlord Klomtoo has reached a new and deadly battlefield on the American western frontier, circa 1866. Now, as their younger selves face the overwhelming might of an armada of time-traveling warships, August and Mrs. A must undertake a perilous journey, beset by dangers at every turn, to find the one piece of technology that might avert a Timeline disaster!
1910.
The Atherton compound, north of Los Angeles, California.
Ambassador April Atherton-Ross and Doctor Peregrine Ross shimmered into view.
They looked at the house, which appeared to Ross to be little more than a smoking ruin. He wondered how anyone could have survived such an attack, one which had turned a sub-Headquarters of the Council of Time Defense into a shattered, debris-strewn battlezone.
Ross scanned the area, turning in a smooth, 360-degree circle. “Nothing on sensors,” he said. “Maybe a damping field, it’s hard to tell. Anyway, I don’t see any trace of her.”
April strode purposefully toward what should have been the front door.
“Where do you think she is?” called Ross, as his wife, at age 35 the youngest woman ever named an Ambassador to the Council of Time Defense, stepped across the once-impressive threshold.
“She’s inside,” said April, “and underground.”
The house was large, approximately twelve times as large as the ornately styled 20-room Victorian mansion appeared to any casual observer, because five of the house’s eight stories were below ground, and those floors were larger in square footage than the ones above.
And somwhere inside, they expected to find April’s great-great Aunt, the esteemed Ambassador Bartolomea Atherton, most likely on one of the lower floors, in the research and communications laboratories.
Picking their way across the wreckage of the house was not a physical challenge at all, but rather a mental one for Dr. Ross. He had never met the woman that his associate referred to, respectfully, as Aunt Barty, and centuries of Council lore and history called Mrs. A.
Ross’ natural curiosity upon meeting this famous personage threatened to tip over into stunned amazement, as he observed certain items among the disarray he now encountered.
Of particular curiosity to the history buff Ross was a 13th century suit of armor that had gone missing from the Armory of the White Tower of London and had somehow ended up in the sub-basement of the Metropolitan Museum of New York City in 1976, when Ross had first seen it and noted its peculiar attributes, notably, that it had six fingers on each armored glove. How this particular suit ended up in the Museum was a mystery not only to Ross, an expert in the history of arms and armour, but also to his fellow members of the Council of Time Defense, as well as the Metropolitan Museum’s notoriously fastidious staff. For Ross, the presence of this remarkable artifact here, in 1910, in the ruins of the Atherton compound following a mysterious attack, only added to the mystery.
“Get this beam out of the way,” snapped April.
With the assistance of Ross’ levitator, a sleek black handheld unit of his own design, based on the two-point energy flow system designed by August Atherton, they cleared a large column of pink Aswan granite that blocked the secret opening to the staircase.
“Good news,” said Ross. “If the levitator works properly, that means the Neutronic Rotation system works…”
“Meaning, the man who invented it hasn’t been removed from the Timeline? Not necessarily,” was April’s reply.
She was ten years younger than Dr. Ross, but on this team the prodigiously talented April was the senior ranking Council member.
Dr. Ross, whose accomplishments in the field of electro-mechanical engineering were unequalled, knew little about the notoriously unpredictable and largely theoretical effects of temporal transport as they applied up and down the Timeline.
April Atherton-Ross, however, had pursued a vigorous and detailed study of the phenomena, to the point of interviewing and brain-picking the woman they sought now, who was perhaps the greatest and most knowledgable expert to ever work in their field. So Dr. Ross stood corrected, and now he watched his partner examine a brick wall, which was painted a gay lavendar color. She placed the palm of her hand on a particular spot, and presently, Ross could see that they were standing at the top of an ornate staircase, where previously they appeared to be standing before a brick wall.
“Clever piece of camouflage. McGroarty Tactile Thermoplastics?” he asked. But there was no one except the ruins to reply, for Ambassador April Atherton-Ross was already headed down the newly-revealed staircase at a brisk pace.
*****************
Klomtoo.
Far from Earth.
Somewhere on the Timeline.
Klomtoo saw and heard the little boy, as he shouted and kicked and tumbled through the void.
All the kicking and screaming was irritating to Klomtoo. It was forever a reminder that his second remote attack had failed. Just like the first.
Now, he was going to Earth.
As his armada moved through the cosmos, slowly, and then with accelerating speed, the sensors gathered Earth data.
“Klomtoo!!” exclaimed Klomtoo.
His language skills would improve.
****************
June, 1866.
Yankton, Dakota Territory.
Benjamin Pedlow, the owner and proprietor of Pedlow’s Mercantile Exchange and Purveyor of Dry Goods, untied the string and opened the heavy canvas bag that the two boys had lugged, proudly, into his place of business.
“How many ya got?” he asked, peering into the bag.
“Twenny-seven! Some’s a little small, but mostly they’s nice big ones,” said the larger of the boys. “My brother here only got five or six. I got the rest!” he beamed.
Unslighted, the younger brother grinned, revealing two roughly parallel rows of randomly ordered adult and juvenile teeth, interspersed with occasional gaps of one or two tooth-widths.
Pedlow puffed on a Meerschaum pipe, and through a haze of tobacco smoke he regarded the boys. Each boy was heavily weighed down by a rusted, ancient Stockdale musket.
“Used birdshot, did you?” Pedlow asked.
“Yes, sir!!” the sibling duo sang in concert.
But a moment later, their spirits sank.
Pedlow re-tied the bag with a grunt, puffed his pipe, and blew a new cloud of smoke across the counter, as he pushed the bag back toward them.
“Don’t want ‘em,” he gruffed.
“What??” they cried, crestfallen.
“You see, my lads, the quail’s a small bird,” Pedlow explained patiently. “Time you dig out all the birdshot, ain’t nothing left to eat. Customers ain’t payin’ for quail that’s been birdshot, and I won’t neither. You got to trap ‘em.”
“But that’s a lot harder!” complained the older boy. “We was out there all day yesterday! Box traps an’ ratcatchers dint get no birds a’tall!”
“Well, that’s the trick, ain’t it?” Pedlow seemed to take a modicum of pleasure in the boys’ disappointment. “Here’s what you do. Take a piece of leather cord, and…”
His thoughts and words were interrupted at just that moment, as a fourteen-year-old girl in an oversized brown Stetson hat, miner’s denim pants and embroidered men’s shirt sashayed into the Exchange.
She stepped up to the counter with a bright greeting of, “Hallo, Mister Pedlow!” and a canvas bag just like the boys’, also bulging with quail.
Across her back was a Winchester rifle, and on her left hip was holstered a Colt .45 revolver.
Like the Red Sea before Moses and the Israelites, the boys parted, leaving space for the girl to step between them and hoist her bag onto the counter.
“Hello, Wildcat! How many ya got, today?” Pedlow asked, greeting the girl with a friendliness that made the two boys bristle.
“Thirty-eight! Mostly real big’uns, too!” was the girl’s proud reply.
Pedlow lifted the bag, estimating its weight. Then he stroked his chin thoughtfully, and took the pipe from his mouth.
Grinning, he blew a smoke-cloud that would leave remnants hanging in the warm summer air for hours, if not days.
Then, he reached under the counter and withdrew a number of coins, and as the two boys watched dumbstruck, he handed the coins over to the girl, with a smile and a small entrainment of fresh smoke-puffs.
“I know I can trust you, Wildcat!” said Pedlow, as he inverted the open bag over a dried-out pickle-barrel, which served as a smokehouse box, and the small avian...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 1.12.2020 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction |
| ISBN-10 | 1-0983-3527-9 / 1098335279 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-0983-3527-4 / 9781098335274 |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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