LOCATION: LITTLE WATER CAY
COUNTRY: TURKS AND CAICOS
DATE: SEPTEMBER 4, 2049 | TIME: 1:00 PM
The boats dropped Peacekeepers off at a small tour dock. The troops were marshalled to the east, where they mustered on a vast, sandy beach.
By mid-day, the sun warmed the island. The gentle tropical winds and swaying trees felt like they set the wrong kind of mood for what they all knew was about to happen.
Little Water Cay was home to the indigenous rock iguana, who inhabited the nearby forest. Every so often, the sound of them sneezing could be heard over the breeze and rustling of the trees.
Just past noon, Kaela felt a shift in the air nearby. She smelled ozone, and the hairs on her arms stood.
The Commander shouted, “Prepare yourselves! Get into formation. To me!”
Kaela shook her arms and exhaled, hopping in place like a prize boxer.
“Where’s your weapon, soldier?” the Commander asked.
Kaela smiled and balled her fists.
“Got everything I need right here, Ma’am.”
The Commander scoffed and mumbled to herself as she continued down the line, inspecting the troops.
Kaela heard her say something about ‘fucking kids with their fucking MMA obsession’ but she didn’t let it bother her.
She knew she had her secret weapon, in place and ready to pull when needed.
Elena was positioned toward the back, much to her chagrin. She kept saying she wasn’t a Healer, but the Commander’s word was final, especially when they were about to enter combat.
Finally at exactly 1300 hours, the portal opened.
A sonic boom sounded out, and a blast of force assaulted those on either side closest to the spot where it formed.
The first two rows, including Kaela, were thrown backward by the force, but the rows of soldiers behind held firm.
The Peacekeeper contingent had formed rows on both sides of the portal, which stretched hundreds of feet from west to east along the length of the sandy beach.
Elena and Kaela were both on the north side of the long, jagged rift with about half the troops. The Commander and other senior officers took the south side.
They didn’t know which side of the portal the assault would come from, so it was standard procedure to split the force in half and each take a side.
“Line up!” the Commander shouted. “Prepare for breach!”
As if on cue, the air along the south side of the portal began to vibrate.
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At first it was subtle, a pressure change Kaela felt more than heard. Then grains of sand lifted from the beach, hanging in the air as if gravity had briefly forgotten them. The wind died in an instant. Waves froze mid-break, their white crests trembling but not falling.
Kaela’s breath caught.
Something was wrong.
Then suddenly the portal surged forward violently, like a bulldozer shovel scooping up everything in its wake.
Kaela watched in horror as she heard shouting, cut off in an instant. She saw bodies, sand, and water all disappear from view. One moment the south line was holding formation, weapons up. The next, they were just gone.
Then it was over.
Three seconds. Maybe less.
The portal collapsed inward with a thunderclap that pulled the very air from Kaela’s lungs. A heartbeat later, the ocean rushed forward, pouring into a vast, empty gouge where the beach had been. Where soldiers had stood just a moment earlier.
The water churned.
The portal was gone.
And along with it, over a thousand Peacekeepers.
“What the fuck?” someone asked. Panicked voices started whispering. Then shouting.
Kaela, who had been positioned not three feet from the portal before it moved, turned around.
She held her hand high in the air.
“Silence!” she yelled.
Her enhanced voice took on the tone of command, and within a few seconds, the remaining troops had turned to face her, waiting for her to speak.
“I have no idea what that was,” she said, throwing her thumb over her shoulder toward the ocean. “But we are not going to stand idly by and let them take our people.”
“What can we do?” someone asked.
Kaela couldn’t see who it was, but if nobody else was going to take charge, she decided she would have to.
She looked around for a moment and pointed out three people who she knew from their Tutorial.
“You three, step forward, please.”
Elena had joined them up front also.
When the three were standing in front of Kaela, she set a plan in motion. One of them was Jud Haggerty, former US President Trent’s head of security, now a Lieutenant Commander in the Peacekeeper Force.
“Jud, please contact High Command. We need to report this up the chain immediately, but this is too urgent to go through regular channels. Use my authorization if needed.”
She sent him a private message with her communication codes.
“Got it, Kaela,” Jud said.
“Next,” Kaela continued, “we need to arrange transport back. Can you coordinate that, please?”
The man next to Jud nodded and began working out the logistics.
Finally, Kaela turned toward the third man she had called to the front of the group.
“Evan, are you willing to go on a mission with Elena and me?”
Evan Mercer, Colin and Leah’s son, was a year older than Kaela and Elena, and had joined the Peacekeepers with them as a portal specialist.
He smiled.
“Fuck yes, I am. We going after them?”
Kaela couldn’t hold back her excitement.
“Yes, we are. I need to clear the mission first, but we’ll need to move fast if you’re going to track the origin.”
Evan started working right away, pulling out two devices and setting them up in the sand.
“I’m on it,” he said.
Kaela composed a message that he sent to her parents and Grim Thorne.
---
To: Graham Thorne, Mallory Sirova, Vanessa Sirova, Darian Sirova
CC: Elena Sirova, Colin Mercer
SUBJECT: Urgent Mission Request
At 1300 local time on Little Water Cay, a portal opened.
This time, it moved forward a hundred feet and pulled everything in with it, then closed down.
A separate, more detailed report is being sent by Jud Haggerty.
Approximately 1,000 Peacekeepers MIA, along with a big chunk of the beach. Recommend a small team to gather intel.
Kaela Sirova
Elena Sirova
Evan Mercer
Time is of the essence if we are to track and follow.
Request immediate approval.
---
She let out a breath.
This was going to be dangerous.
Ops were meticulously planned. Excursions to likely hostile worlds, even more so. But this time, as she stood looking at the empty beach where a thousand of her colleagues had been standing just a few minutes prior, she knew they had to move now, or risk losing the scent.