By and all copyright of Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
A new collection of short stories featuring the Time Warriors. Think you know everything that happened in series one? Not quite. Join Varran, Jacke, Tyran and Michael as they find face new dangers which will test them to their limits. Six stories including Fire and Ice which was released as a surprise extra in Tempest. In Irish Eyes, we learn more of Varran’s past, in the Gift a distraught Robert meets a woman that can talk to the dead, Jacke is trapped alone in ancient Ireland during an invasion in Trinity while Rachel faces an occupied Earth which has never heard of the Time Warriors. In Twisted Michael and Jacke find the world has changed dramatically and it’s all their fault.
Jacke took her hand unit out of her shoulder bag and locked into the Juggernaught’s teleport system. She keyed in her code and with a last glance around to ensure no one was watching she pressed home and they vanished in the surreal blue light of the teleport beam.
The world exploded in a bright light that exploded all around them, their ears bursting under the sudden scream of pressure. They cried in agony as they fell from the Stepping Stone onto the floor of the Juggernaught. They lay there squirming as the pain echoed through every nerve in their bodies. Their ears hurt and their eyes stung as the pain began to subside. Michael rolled over arching his back uselessly. Jacke lay on her front panting, palms flat on the floor. It took several minutes before she was able to call out to him. Relief flooded her as he answered weakly.
“What the hell happened?” he gasped.
Blinking against the light, Jacke managed to sit up and look around her.
“Varran?” she called out then stopped dead.
“Where is he?” Michael asked.
He caught the tentative pause in her voice before she simply answered. “I don’t think he’s been here for a while.” He lifted his head wincing at the ache in his neck.
The sight that greeted them stopped them both dead.
The Juggernaught was a wreck, walls shattered like concrete, the entire command centre shredded like paper. They looked up, horrified as they saw the ceiling was a web of huge cracks. Lights were hanging in a macabre skeletal pattern among girders that had been snapped like bread sticks. Outside was not the familiar twinkle and burn of stars but a sky ribbed with grey and white slabs of ominous looking clouds. Jacke could only stare in shock.
“It’s been stripped bare. Where are all the computers? All our super-duper gadgets?”
“It must have crashed,” Michael gasped. “But that doesn’t make sense or we wouldn’t have been able to teleport at all.” He turned on his heel, running his hands over the walls of the teleport chamber. “All the circuits are burned out or missing. What the hell is going on?”
“Come on,” Jacke said, eyes darting all over the ruins.
Dumbfounded they got to their feet and walked forward carefully round what was left of it. Nothing was working, every monitor and power conduit was dark, lifeless. They were either jagged holes or burnt out, useful to no one. Jacke squatted down at the main hologrid console and with a grunt reached under its shattered bulk.
“What are you looking for?” Michael asked as her fingers clawed for the
release switch of a compartment. It flipped open, letting her reach inside.
“For this.” She stood up and showed him a mini tool kit. “There’s enough of the console left for the hand unit to work with so if there’s any power left in this at all, I might be able to reroute a couple of systems and see what we can find.”
“Whoever scavenged it must have thought it was a dead duck,” he assumed. She handed Michael her bag and unclipped the case, extracting scalpel like instruments. As she worked Michael put his plastic bag with an array of cartoon characters memorabilia inside it. If anything was going to happen, he wasn’t going to fight with a bag in his hand.
“This couldn’t be the Juggernaught. It looks like it has been here for a while,” he commented, looking at the dust on his hands. Wait a minute, he thought to himself. Taking his hand unit out of his pocket, he activated it telling it to switch to comms.
“Tyran can you hear me?” he said, pausing for an answer. “Tyran please answer, we’re in trouble here.” No response came and his face fell as he looked at Jacke. He ran a hand through his brown hair. “I don’t like this,” he commented. Suddenly he jumped with a yell scaring Jacke in the process as something scuttled near him and saw a hairy shape run for cover.
“Rats!” he shuddered. “I hate rats!”
“Not too fond of them myself,” Jacke said as she linked her hand unit into a portal and poked a circuit board. Leaving her to her work, Michael clambered over wreckage, noticing the potted plants that Jacke and Tyran had added to the command centre, upturned and decayed, their leaves brittle as fallen autumn leaves. He reached the far wall, a shaft of sunlight highlighting millions of dust particles that scattered in his wake. He steadied himself on a rusting girder and pulled himself up to look through a tear in the wall.
“Jacke, we’re in London! The Juggernaught crashed in London!” he cried. She looked up at him. “In Hyde Park by the look of it.” He stared outside seeing the city he knew so well. There was traffic and aeroplanes and life seemed to be going on as normal.
“But the Juggernaught is decayed, old. Could we have time travelled or is this an illusion?”
“It might be a parallel dimension,” Michael suggested.
She stared round her. “The Juggernaught is self repairing,” she remembered. “So why hasn’t she?” They exchanged disturbed looks.
Suddenly the circuits sparked, the console lighting up weakly as if it was all too much of a strain. She fiddled with some controls and managed to bring up a portion of the security video.
“Is that it working?” Michael jumped down from his viewpoint and joined her. She looked troubled as she shook her head in frustration.
“I don’t know how long it’ll last so keep your eyes peeled,” she warned. The holoscreen warbled into life above them at an angle, its image breaking up violently. They saw Varran being his usual self, tinkering and pottering at the Juggernaught’s systems, always striving to update and improve them. Jacke ran the scalpel like tool along another circuit.
“And now we have sound,” she said softly. As they watched Varran looked up, his expression one of alarm. He ran round the command table, hands dancing along controls, and by the look on his face he was afraid, very afraid. Jacke’s stomach was filled with butterflies.
The air was roaring with alarms, the computer voice repeating something she couldn’t make out. The Xereban looked confused, staring at the console with puzzled eyes. Suddenly the Juggernaught rolled, banking on one side as if struck by some goliath, the room shuddering. It seemed to spin as it fell off its axis. A massive wave of shocking white lightning ripped across everything leaving fire in its wakes as a million circuits burned like dry grass. An explosion threw him across the room as the flames danced all around him like defiant imps. The hologram fizzled out. They stared at the spot where it had been in stunned silence.
“An accident or an attack?” said Michael finally. Jacke sighed as the power failed completely.
“That’s it,” she said quietly. “The Juggernaught’s dead.” They stood, lost and alone.
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The Time Warriors and Beyond 