Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“I tell you it’s a hologram! Once our people get past it they’ll see conventional forces, without a doubt.”
General Bel Charles is known for being a bit of a throwback. A real blood, guts, and the occasional atrocity soldier. Calmly guarding a research project that bordered on science fiction sat badly with him. Just because he was coming up for retirement didn’t mean he needed a quiet life.
So when the tranquility of Leicestershire was ruptured by an interdimensional portal as the daft project sort-of succeeded, he knew his glory days weren’t over. While other people were ranting about stabilisation and exposure, he was leading a small unit into the unknown.
Which proved to be an even quieter slice of what looked like medieval Europe, complete with fleeing peasants and a lone knight whose charge ended in a hail of bullets. They were standing over the armour-clad body discussing possibilities when one they hadn’t considered descended from the heavens on gigantic bat wings, trailing smoke and hissing like an enormous monitor lizard.
Bel Charles had to give credit: for an anti-invasion countermeasure, it was superb. Even he’d panicked and fled. But when the apparition came through a few hours later, he was ready with extra firepower he’d called up. They had just deployed among the buildings and trees about Facility A of Raulderson Interdimensional Research Site.
Not that much of Facility A could be seen because of the blinding ring of light that passed through its walls and rose fifty metres into the sky. From the west, you could see the cafeteria by the main gate through the ring. From the east, you looked through and saw the setting for a fantasy movie.
From there came the hologram: it looked like a massive dragon: scaly, six-legged – although the front pair are reminiscent of arms – pair of wings, long tail, bright purple eyes.
Bel Charles sighs. He’s sure it isn’t bulletproof – they’re simply passing through the projection. That’s why he’s held off ordering the tanks to open fire. Friendly-fire incidents involving 120mm shells tend to be multiple-casualty events: something he’d rather avoid.
“General Charles?”
He looks up.
“What is it, Private?”
They point towards the giant screen on the wall.
“Your hologram, sir. It just threw one of the Challengers at the helicopter.”
He glances across in time to see the helicopter crash to the ground. There’s no sign of the tank.
“Are we su-”
It lashes out, swatting the other Challenger sideways. The tank rolls once, then crashes down on broken tracks with smoke coming from the panels over the engine.
Bel Charles sighs. Yes, we’re sure.
He points at the screen.
“Pull everything back.”
The dragon waits fifteen minutes before returning through the portal.
Bel Charles snaps an order.
“Tell Professor Crow to shut it down! I’d rather he do it tidily, but that hole in our reality has to close.”
Minutes pass. The ring of light flickers, then goes out. Bel Charles rushes from the command centre to Facility A. Within he finds frost-covered machinery, burning computers, and dead people. Off to one side, he sees Professor Augustin Crow standing, tears running down his face.
Bel Charles nods sympathetically.
“My condolences for your loss.”
Augustin looks at him, plainly mystified.
“Loss? After eighty years, we cracked her damnable equations! I beat the Emmett Theorem! Did you see it? Did you? What a triumph!”
Bel Charles nods and turns away. There’s nothing to say. When you’re too fixated to register deaths, your cause is either monstrous or insane. Possibly both.
This project needs to stop.