Primus Naraschone Mihajlović sat at the edge of her desk, body bent forwards
at her waist, hands braced tightly against the wood. Splinters dug in
underneath her fingernails, but she didn’t pay them any mind. She
barely noticed, and she almost felt like she deserved it. The war was not
going in her favor. The enemy just kept coming, and they couldn’t keep up
with it. The aliens seemingly had an infinite supply of fighters, and there
was no competing with that tactic. The home field advantage could only take
them so far. If they could only figure out where these portals were going to
form, she might be able to bottleneck them, or something, but they appeared
to be random. Random or intentional. Or both. There was a knock on the door.
“Enter.”
Her assistant and Head Bodyguard, Kineret McArthur walked in. “There’s
another one.”
“Send a squadron. I’ll watch them all die from here.”
“The ship,” Kineret began to explain, “it’s different. It looks different,
and as soon as the squadron responded tactically, it retreated.”
Naraschone perked up. “They’re adapting. Send a second squadron. Overwhelm
them with everything we got.”
Kineret held her finger against her earpiece. “They don’t think it’s the
Zippers. They sent a message in binary, so the scientists need time to
convert it. The alien ship is projecting the golden spiral on the front.
That’s a symbol of balance for us. Maybe it means the same thing to them.”
She jerked her chin as she listened more. “More holographic images are
coming in. Smiling humans. The vierkam heart. A...sort of
half vierkam heart. They’re interpreting the next one as an olive
branch.”
“What, are they surrendering?”
Kineret kept listening. “They converted the binary code. It’s just text. It
says, we come in peace. Take us to your leader.”
“Have the General send them my coordinates.”
“Sir, I would strongly advise—”
“I’m not going to last another week in office, Kin. They’re this close to
voting me out. Egypt and Holland are prepared to back my replacement now,
which means he officially has enough votes. Dying at the direct hands of an
enemy would at least make my biography read less pathetic. Give them my
coordinates.”
Kineret turned away, and whispered the orders into her mouthpiece.
A couple of minutes later, as Naraschone was putting her blazer back on, a
woman suddenly appeared in the office. “How did you do that?”
“I was born with it,” the stranger replied. “Are you this world’s prime
leader?”
“Yes, I’m Primus Naraschone Mihajlović.” She held her hand out, palm up, as
was the custom.
The woman looked down at it. “I don’t know what to do with that. Where I’m
from, we hug upon first meeting. Most of my crew shakes hands like this.”
She pantomimed moving her hand up and down, palm facing the side.
“We do it like this.” Naraschone swung her arm over, and palm circled
Kineret, but Naraschone’s hand was on top, since she was the superior.
The stranger smiled, and reached out to mimic Kineret, but as an honored
guest, it was her hand that should be on top. “Eliana Prime.” That’s just a
coincidence. It’s literally my surname.”
Nararschone carefully turned her hand over for her, and performed the
ritual. “So, you’re not from our world either? Humans evolved on other
planets, or did you simply arrive in a form that I am supposedly more
comfortable with?”
“It’s more complicated than that. I’m from a different universe. My crew all
hail from different universes beyond that. We came together to fight the
Ochivari.”
“Is that what they’re called?” Kineret questioned. She took out her handheld
device to write that down, and take any other necessary notes.
Eliana lifted her chin as if to watch her type, but couldn’t really see, and
didn’t care to. “Ochivari is plural. Singular is Ochivar. They
originated on a planet called Worlon in Salmonverse. They evolved from
semiparasitic insectoids which were accidentally introduced to human DNA
millions of years prior. We don’t understand the mechanism by which the
foreign code was integrated into their systems, but we hypothesize that it
gave their ancestors a survival advantage over their cousins who did
not receive it.”
“This is good stuff, keep going,” Kineret encouraged.
“I’m no expert,” Eliana clarified. “I’m just the teleporter on the team. I’m
not even the main teleporter. If you would like to speak with our
captain, I could take you to her, but be warned, she is decidedly
not human. Her form can be alarming to some.”
“I can handle it,” Naraschone insisted. “I’ve seen plenty of Zippers first
hand.”
“Hold on,” Kineret interrupted, holding her earpiece again. “Another one
just appeared. Very different form too. It’s...quite large.”
Eliana looked pleased. “Azura and the Transit found us. Thank God, we could
use their help. Have you been at war for a long time? Ochivari don’t usually
fight physically. They generally release this virus—”
Kineret interrupted again, “it’s a giant cube. It just appeared in the
middle of Plangol Field.”
“A cube?” Eliana asked. “That would be the Crossover. There’s no telling
who’s in it right now. It changes hands, and I’ve not even begun to explain
to you how time works for people who traverse the bulk.”
“If you’re a teleporter, that means you can get me there?” Naraschone asked.
“It’s on the other side of the planet.”
“Sir, please,” Kineret urged.
Eliana held out both of her hands. “All aboard who’s coming aboard.”
Naraschone grasped one hand while Kineret hesitated. “I guess I have to go
to protect you,” she lamented before taking Eliana’s other hand.
The three of them were standing before the large Crossover cube. A ship was
just landing next to it at the same time. Eliana looked upon it with a sense
of familiarity that she did not show the cube. A second...building
maybe, appeared as well. It was much smaller, fit for only a handful of
people. Humans started coming out of all three structures, but more were
coming from their own portals, each of which sparkled and shined with two or
three dozen brilliant colors. A small group appeared, releasing a blast of
energy that was enough to blow everyone’s hair back, but not enough to knock
them over. A spacewoman appeared to be literally tearing through the
colorful fabric of spacetime. More of this sort of fabric rippled and waved
next to her as a coat formed from the aether. The man wearing it pulled the
hood back, and smiled. Glass cracked and shattered as another man forced
himself through his breach. He reached back through, and helped a companion
of his across. A woman slowly faded into view to their left, sitting
cross-legged on the ground. Yet another woman burst out of nothing, and
crash landed next to her, but she seemed to be okay.
Eliana recognized some of them, but not everyone. She walked over to greet
the others from her ship as they were descending the ramp. It was hard to
tell who was in charge at first. Unless they came in together, they
expressed surprise at being there together. Naraschone would think that the
small group from the giant cube would be the leaders, but they looked just
as out of the loop as everyone else. It was the woman escorted by the man
who literally punched his way here who stepped away from the forming crowd,
towards Kiteran and Primus Mihajlović. “Hello Primus. I’m Thack Natalie
Collins, temporary coordinator of the vanguard. I wanted everyone to come
here so they could see what happens when the natives of a given world fight
back. You may feel distress, but you are faring better than you realize.
When the Ochivari come to a universe, they usually only do one of two
things. They leave it alone, or they sterilize the entire population, and
then bug out. You’re proof that they do not get to decide everything.”
“I don’t understand,” Naraschone admitted.
“We’ll talk more about it.” Thack turned to the crowd, which quieted down
for her. “Travelers of the bulk, welcome to Stoutverse. The fighting has
only begun here. What the Ochivari do not realize is that everything they’ve
been doing so far have been only minor skirmishes. The first battle in a
multiversal war is coming, and you are all here to bear witness.” She
consulted her watch. “The Transit will be arriving within the hour. Until
then, I’ll ask the current operators of the Crossover—specifically the
managers of Kingdom Hotel—to prepare a meal for us all. Khuweka, if you
will, please take the Cormanu back into orbit, scan for breaches, and
protect this world until the Transit Army arrives. Your crew will stay with
us.”
“I would be honored to, Miss Collins.” This must have been who Eliana was
talking about. While everyone else here looked human, Khuweka was tall,
white, and almost monstrous. She could be intimidating if she wanted to be,
but her voice was soft and unimposing. There was only one other like her. He
was originally in the small building, but he followed his brethren up the
ramp into the Cormanu without asking for permission, or even saying a word
at all. Naraschone didn’t even know if he was a man. He just looked more
masculine to her.
There were more in the Crossover cube than the small group that came out of
it at first, but Naraschone didn’t get the impression that it was anywhere
near full capacity. Picnic tables appeared out of nowhere, but Eliana wasn’t
the one who did it. Her ship, the Cormanu itself appeared to be a conscious
entity, capable of transporting anything from anywhere on the planet.
Probably no one was missing all this stuff right now since most people were
trying to survive in the bunkers. Well, not most. They had yet to build
sufficient facilities for the entire population of the planet. They never
thought they would need anything like that. They should have been better
prepared. Lives would have been spared.
Kineret was uncomfortable taking this time away from the chaos of war that
they had been in the midst of for the last few years, but Thack Collins was
confident that the two Maramon, as they were called, were capable of
defending them from orbit. Some of the others who came here were not
soldiers, but a lot of them were, so they could jump into action if another
wave showed up. Eliana’s remark that they were from all different sorts of
universes was true of those who did not arrive in the Cormanu. The man who
escorted Miss Collins was father to a young woman on the Cormanu. Her mother
was supposed to be coming next on the fabled Transit, which would reportedly
mark the whole world’s salvation as it was the only thing actually designed
for a war like this one. Naraschone was holding off on judgment until later.
For now, they just enjoyed the food that a man named Bell prepared, and
talked. The two locals stayed quiet at first to let the others catch up with
each other. This was evidently a pretty big deal. They had never all come
together like this. There were supposed to be an infinite number of
universes out there, but there must be something special about this one.
Thack called it Stoutverse, a term that the natives had never used for
themselves, but if Naraschone had anything to do with it, they would start
now.
Naraschone was laughing with a new friend she met named Curtis, who had an
endless supply of interesting stories about his time in an unnamed universe
where he was part of a group of superheroes. He was part of The Grenadiers
now. But Kineret wasn’t listening to him anymore. She was instead listening
to her earpiece, which kept a constant consolidated stream of battle
chatter. She was genetically engineered to be able to comprehend multiple
voices at once, allowing her to keep apprised on the situation from many
sources at once. It was called the Unified Tactical Awareness System, and
while a lot of key players around the world could use it effectively to some
degree, she could parse the highest number of distinct channels of anyone,
which was why she worked directly for the Primus of Earth. “What is it?”
Kineret looked up at the crew of the Cormanu, who appeared to be listening
to their own radio system. “They know. Breaches all over the place. It’s a
full tactical assault.” The whole crowd stopped talking as she faced her
superior. “We need to get you to the bunker. Eliana, it’s back on the other
side of the world.”
“The mass incursion,” Thack Natalie Collins said, standing up. “I predicted
this, but timekeeping is difficult to measure for me. You have so many time
zones.”
Ecrin, the Captain of the Prototype—the small building that only a handful
of people crewed—stood up. “What do we do?”
“I’m not a military leader,” Thack replied. “I can’t tell you what to do.
But given the low maneuverability of your respective machines...I suggest
everyone convene on the Cormanu.”
“Diamond Zek,” Kivi said, “beam us all up.”
They nearly all disappeared, leaving behind only Naraschone, Kineret, Thack,
Thack’s bodyguard and universe puncher, Limerick, and Eliana. “Where’s this
bunker?” Eliana asked.
“Right underneath the International Assembly House,” Kineret answered as she
was tapping on her handheld device. “I’ll get you the coordinates.” Before
she could recite them, a loud horn blared in the distance. A giant, and
particularly long, object raced towards them. It stopped suddenly, right
between all of the other machines and the picnic tables.
A woman stepped out of it, and approached the small group. Others followed
behind her. “Where’s my daughter?” she asked Thack.
Thack pointed towards the sky, and looked up. “On the frontlines. The
Darning Wars have begun.”
