Transendence Read online

  Transcendence:

  New Beginnings

  By

  Jared R. Teer

  Strategic Book Group

  Copyright 2011

  All rights reserved - Jared R. Teer

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, from the publisher.

  Strategic Book Group

  P.O. Box 333

  Durham CT 06422

  www.StrategicBookClub.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61204-211-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  Book Design: Prepress-Solutions.com

  Dedications

  This book is dedicated to Dairryonne, Elmore, and Damon.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1—The End of Transience

  CHAPTER 2—The Day of the New

  CHAPTER 3—In the Beginning

  CHAPTER 4—The Halls of Glory

  CHAPTER 5—Oneiric Gamers

  CHAPTER 6—Confrontation

  CHAPTER 7—The Puppet Master

  CHAPTER 8—The Man of Reason

  CHAPTER 9—To Destroy a Planet

  CHAPTER 10—Rise of the Insectizoids

  CHAPTER 11—Immortal Combat

  CHAPTER 12—The Valley of Death

  CHAPTER 13—Seishin Kumite

  CHAPTER 14—Island Hideaway

  CHAPTER 15—Fight Like a Girl

  CHAPTER 16—The Semifinals

  CHAPTER 17—Kagan

  CHAPTER 18—Urban Golem

  CHAPTER 19—The Student’s Pupil

  CHAPTER 20—The Age of Reason

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER 1

  The End of Transience

  Mosul, Iraq:

  0734 hours, Sunday, August 21, 2005

  “Ten days and a wake-up,” Darion said cheerfully as he took a seat in the Stryker. He had just completed the last dismount of the shift. The workday—night, rather—had wound down without incident, and he was eager to mount up and head back to base.

  “Actually,” Oklahoma replied, “that would be eleven days. Today just started; you gotta count today.”

  Darion was part of a nine-man Stryker team. He and his squad, the Outlaws of Alpha Company, had just completed the final dismount of the shift and were heading back to base, their replacements en route to promptly take over. It was Alpha Company’s turn to conduct the night-owl patrol (2400 to 0800) through the war-torn streets of Mosul. The shifts consisted of patrolling the streets of the city and dismounting at certain checkpoints. The night-owl patrol was the preferred shift—it tended to be relatively uneventful, got you back in time for breakfast, and left you with the daylight hours for leisure. This shift, like all the rest, had gone smoothly—no IEDs and no ambushes.

  “Actually, Poindexter,” replied Darion, “I don’t have to count anything. I’m gonna have breakfast, take a nap, watch some movies, and play some cards. I don’t count doing nothing as a day, so … ten days and a wake-up.”

  Sergeants Darion Elmore and Jacob Jarvis (aka Oklahoma) had attended basic training and infantry school together. They had been stationed together in the same unit at Ft. Lewis, Washington, and subsequently deployed together to the grand sandbox known as Iraq.

  Darion was a young man of twenty-one. He was muscular, but not bulky, with the lean build of one who had competed in amateur boxing since the time he was ten. Darion sacrificed his senior year in college at the University of Texas to join the army after the September 11 attacks. Some called him crazy for doing so. Some even told him that a black man had no place in the U.S. Army. He heard it all, but he signed up anyway. He knew the risks, but he didn’t care. He lost an uncle in those towers—a good man, who, like all the others, didn’t deserve such a fate.

  Jacob thought Darion was kind of crazy for leaving college as well. If he had the means to go to the University of Oklahoma, he didn’t think he would have made the same decision to leave. Jacob was twenty, and had signed up primarily to get his schooling paid for to make a better life for his family, having married his high school sweetheart shortly after graduating. Some called him crazy as well for joining as an infantryman when he could have picked any number of jobs with higher life expectancies to attain the G.I. Bill. Darion didn’t think he was crazy. On the contrary, Darion told Jacob that the infantry was perfect for him—perfect for an Oklahoma redneck who was handy with a rifle from years of hunting squirrels or whatever they did in the backwoods.

  “Typical. That’s all you people do, sit around watching movies and playing cards. All that’s missing is the forty-ounce. Anyway, you going to the phone center? I gotta call my wife, and I told my mom I would call my sister.”

  “We all know how it works in Oklahoma—your wife is your sister,” said Darion. “But, yeah, I’ll go with you. Julia would have a fit if I didn’t call and let her know I was okay.”

  Julia was Darion’s fiancée. He’d met her in Olympia after being stationed at Ft. Lewis. She had Darion under orders to call whenever he returned from a patrol, regardless of the time of day. Calling Julia was a top priority for him, because, if he didn’t, he’d hear about it not only from her, but from Jacob as well—“Did you call smoochie-poo today, Elmore? That’s so cute. She’s got you jumping through hoops and you haven’t even said ‘I do’ yet.”

  The sun had risen at 05-something and the curfew ended at 0600. The Iraqi civilians were out and about—children going to school, shoppers to the market, police directing traffic this way and that. The Outlaw Stryker was pulling up the rear, one of three vehicles, last in the line of Alpha Company Strykers making their way back to base. The Strykers didn’t have to waste time idling in traffic because the citizens knew the drill: pull over and make way for the military vehicles.

  As the police halted traffic and ushered vehicles out of the upcoming, four-way intersection, the vehicle commander reported a possible threat.

  “Be advised. There’s a car stopped in the middle of the intersection, possible hostile.”

  Tension heightened as the first Stryker ahead maneuvered around the stalled vehicle—followed by laughter and a degree of relief when the report from the first Stryker was radioed back and relayed by the vehicle commander.

  “It appears that the driver of the car lost sight of the road and had to stop. The duct tape that was holding his hood down gave way, and the hood flew up, and blocked his view.”

  The second and third Strykers passed the intersection without incident, and entered a residential neighborhood with a narrow, two-lane street. The road ahead was fairly clear, with cars parked here and there on either side of the street, with those ahead of the Strykers pulling over to allow them to pass.

  Unnoticed by the Stryker occupants who were eager to get back to base, the driver of one of the cars ahead pulled over and exited his vehicle. The man, wearing dark sunglasses and a baseball cap, walked briskly away from the car and disappeared down an alley. The first two Strykers passed the car without incident.

  On a rooftop several buildings up the street from the spot where the man had parked was a man tending the potted plants he had growing there. He paused for a moment and turned to look down at the street to watch the Strykers advance through his neighborhood. As the Outlaw Stryker approached the abandoned car, the man on the roof placed his right hand in his pocket and began to search for the pound button on his cell phone.

  The concussive blast obliterated the face of the adjacent building, shattered windows, and tossed the Stryker on its side, skidding across the pavement. Darion was disoriented but managed to scramble through the gunner’s hatch and tumble to the pavement. Hun
ched beside the wreckage, Darion shook his head to clear the cobwebs and gave himself a once-over to make sure he was in one piece. The knees and elbows of his uniform were tinged red, but he felt no pain due to a rush of adrenalin. Luckily, he was wearing his helmet and body armor, and had his M4 slung around his shoulder. He turned his attention to the predicament of his fellow team members, dropping to one knee to assess the scene. The gunner lay motionless in the middle of the street, drawn into a ball amidst the debris. For a moment, Darion was entranced by the sight of the gunner’s uniform changing from sandy beige to a dismal crimson, but was snapped back to awareness by the clatter of enemy small-arms fire and the .50 calibers of the Strykers ahead.

  “Simms!” Darion shouted. He ran to the gunner, secured him by the strap at the back of his body armor, and dragged him from the street to an adjacent alley. Simms looked bad. Darion laid him behind a stack of crates in the alley, but it was doubtful that he would survive his wounds.

  At that moment, a whooshing hiss came from above and an RPG blasted the overturned Stryker.

  Oklahoma! The outside of the Stryker was burning and Darion knew his buddy was still inside. He crawled on bloodied knees to the Stryker and called out, “Jarvis! Jarvis!” At that moment, Darion flinched from the sound of small arms fire, inadvertently ducking a hail of AK-47 bullets from a nearby rooftop. The bullets ricocheted off the Stryker, alerting him that he was under fire—a sitting duck in the middle of the street. He scrambled from his position to a nearby alleyway, bullets following and tacking the ground behind him. There was a stack of three wooden crates beside a wall in the alley, which he promptly ducked behind, squatting with his back to the crates and street. In front of him, the alley was clear, aside from a few crates and rubbish, and led to the street a block over. The ringing of gunfire filled the air as the firefight continued between the Strykers ahead and the rooftop assailants. Darion quickly peeked from behind the crates to see if the coast was clear and was met with another volley of bullets from the rooftop across the street. The crates splintered from the burst of AK rounds and Darion knew that he had to get to better cover before the crates were reduced to kindling.

  He gazed down the alley for an escape route. There were doors on the buildings on both sides of the alley; he didn’t know if they led to dwellings, businesses, or both. He knew a run for the street on the other end of the alley would expose him, and that it still might not lead to safety. He saw that the closest door in the alley was about five yards away to his left on the opposite side. He figured that he would take a chance and bust it in, which would at least get him out of the alley and give him a degree of cover. More shots rained down, ripping through the uppermost crates and hitting the ground just ahead of him in the alley. He had to move fast.

  He raised his M4 over his head and blindly sent suppressive fire backward in the direction of the rooftop, while simultaneously rising and turning from his squatting position to face the direction he was shooting. He quickly backpedaled toward the door as he fired at the roof in three-round bursts. With his back turned, he didn’t notice the man in dark sunglasses and a baseball cap peeking around the building into the alley on the far end. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure he was on track and dropped his shoulder into the thin metal door, splitting the frame and throwing it open. He readied his weapon and gazed around the room. In the corner was an Iraqi mother, shielding two small children, girls, in her arms. It was a modest dwelling to say the least—a living area with an adjoining bathroom. By the rear wall just to the right of where he had entered, there was an eating area, an old wooden table with three chairs. In the middle of the room was the sleeping area, blankets and pillows laid out on the floor. There was a door and a single window in the front wall near the street.

  “It’s okay; it’s okay,” he reassured her, lowering his weapon as he reached backward with his foot and nudged the door closed.

  This is some BS, he thought. I’ve endangered this woman and her kids. The insurgents don’t care about collateral damage, and if they follow me here I might not be able to protect them. But I had no choice. It was either stay out there and get blown to crap or find cover.

  At that moment, fire from the rooftop assailant across the street shattered the front window. Darion sprawled to the floor. The woman screamed as her children wailed in her arms. Darion low-crawled as fast as he could to the woman and her children. He embraced them for a moment and then frantically pointed to the table in the back of the room, wanting them to turn it over and hide behind it.

  “Go, go,” he cried. The woman crawled for the table, dragging her children along behind her. One of the girls lost hold of a teddy bear she had been clutching. The family simply crammed themselves under the table, and Darion turned his attention back to the insurgent on the roof. There was another burst of AK fire from the roof, quickly followed by the much deeper rattle of an army .50-caliber. Darion could tell from a close and resounding crackle that the .50-caliber had riddled the rooftop across the street: the subsequent silence led him to believe that it had hit its mark.

  With that, he noticed that the firefight outside had died down. This was a good sign. The other Strykers had either killed the insurgents or had forced them to flee. Regardless, it would behoove the insurgents to retreat because the surviving Strykers would have radioed for reinforcements. He sighed in relief and gave the quivering family a reassuring thumbs-up. He made his way to the fallen teddy bear, dropped to a knee, and picked it up. The little girl broke away from her mother and rushed toward him. While kneeling, he extended the teddy bear to the girl who accepted it in both hands and blushed. He smiled.

  In the next moment, his heart sank and the events seemed to unfold in slow motion.

  While looking down at the child, in the corner of his eye he noticed the vertical line of light growing wider in the door that he’d rammed in. He shifted his gaze to see the dark silhouette of the man in sunglasses and a baseball cap standing in the doorway. In his right hand, the man held a grenade: in his left, he held its pin. Without taking his eyes off the man, Darion shoved the girl so forcefully that she fell and slid beneath the table where her mother and sister awaited. He exploded from his position and charged toward the man. In an instant, he formed a plan of attack that he thought might possibly save his life. The man stood in the doorway chanting in Arabic. When Darion got within range to strike, he made his move. With his right leg, he kicked forward, hitting the man in the chest and forcing him backward; with his left hand, he slung the door in an attempt to shut it, but, before it did, the grenade detonated. A flash … then all was dark.

  “Darion? Darion?”

  All was dark, but he could hear the voice of his fiancée calling him. The darkness was pierced by a single white light in its midst. In the light stood his Julia in a flowing white dress, her tawny skin radiant in the pitch black.

  “Julia?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m here. I missed you so much that I decided to come here myself.”

  This is impossible, he thought, but was unable to look away. What happened, he wondered. He recalled the jolt, then the burning Stryker, the RPG, then calling for Oklahoma, then being shot at, then the family, the little girl with the teddy bear. Then what?

  “What’s wrong, Darion? I came all this way. Aren’t you happy to see me? Don’t you love me?”

  “Yeah, you know that,” he replied. They embraced and kissed.

  “Then why did you abandon me? Why did you put her before me?”

  At that moment, another sphere of light appeared, forming into the illuminated body of the Iraqi girl with the teddy bear, looking up at him with a smile.

  “What is this?” Darion asked.

  Julia strengthened her embrace. “You abandoned me for her,” she replied. “You could have saved yourself … saved yourself for me … for us. You were supposed to. We were sure you would. You promised that you would come back safe. All you had to do was shield yourself with her. All you had to do was throw her
into him.”

  Suddenly, Julia’s voice became raspier, more sinister, and reverberated as if spoken by a multitude. He had to struggle to get free and backed away from her.

  “But no, you cared more for this filth than you did for me,” she continued. “This ungrateful scum that will most likely be strapping a bomb to itself someday to take out more of your friends. You stupid monkey. Must we do everything for you? Must we show you how to do everything? It’s all very simple. Watch.”

  Julia grabbed the still smiling girl with one hand. Julia presented the palm of her other hand and a grenade suddenly appeared in it. Darion lunged forward to intervene, but Julia suddenly sped backward with the girl as if floating.

  “Stop!” Darion shouted, but this only seemed to amuse Julia.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, a grin spreading across her face. “You shouldn’t go to pieces.”

  With that, the grenade exploded, obliterating Julia and the girl.

  Such visions, nightmares, repeated over and over again, interspersed only with long periods of complete darkness. Sometimes Darion would close his eyes while embracing Julia and, upon opening them, would find himself embracing the man in the sunglasses and baseball cap. In other scenarios, he would find himself on one knee, handing the little girl the teddy bear, with the teddy bear suddenly transforming into a grenade and exploding.

  Darion knew it wasn’t real; he had to be dreaming, but he couldn’t wake up. What Darion didn’t know was that he was in a medically induced coma. What he didn’t know was that the door standing between himself and the grenade saved his life, but he was blinded and lost his arms and his legs. What he didn’t know was that the medics from the other Strykers arrived shortly after the explosion and began the work of saving his life. What he didn’t know was that he had been flown to Germany and that he was in an intensive care unit with doctors working tirelessly to keep him alive. What they didn’t know was that the anesthetized state that they kept him in confined him to a world of unending nightmares from which he could not awake.