The Traveler in Red: Warlords of the Withered Land

Part Three

The Major and Doctor Veneralli hadn’t originally wanted to plan an expedition into the Great Unknown.   The seventeen year-old Harbeckke Institute, named for Harlan Wilder-Harbeckke, a pioneer in invasive-transition sleep consciousness research, called "dreamwalking", had been working for years on a unique, and many said foolish, theory that human dreams could manifest physically as an actual landscape that could be entered and traversed.  They believed that you could enter someone's dreams and walk around in that small "pocket universe" which was, so far as the dreamer was concerned, just as "real" as the everyday world they lived in while awake.  

 Harbeckke's project was called "Outland".

 For different reasons, Major Holloway and Doctor Veneralli had worried about the feasibility and the supposed value of such an excursion.  It didn’t just sound dangerous: it sounded suicidal.  But orders from the Higher–Ups were still orders.   They’d wanted this thing done.   They saw it as an incredible opportunity to expand the scope of human knowledge and widen the power base of the human community past the confines of this solar system.  They wanted to explore.   They wanted to know what new opportunities for technology and weapons advancement they could take from such a new frontier.  They had secret dreams of colonization.

 Major Holloway had dreams that were nightmares.   He knew the Doctor had the same nightmares.

 This just didn’t feel right.

 “Just like all of you, I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around this,” the soldier, a decorated officer named Axwell, said, concern and doubt edging the calm delivery of his words.  “But from what I understand, it’s all been certified as verifiable.”

 “So this place, this strange area of space, actually exists, but we don’t use a conventional form of vehicular travel to get there,” a soldier in the crowd attending the briefing said.  He was in his early thirties.  His name was Kapeleffski.  He was a beefy man, ruddy complected and square-jawed, but his eyes were alive with the anticipation of being among the first to venture forth into a territory heretofore undiscovered by conventional exploration.  

 They were all like that.  It wasn’t just about being soldiers.  It was about being trailblazers into the dangerous unknown.

 They were the men from an Eyes-Only combined U.S. Air Force/U.S. Navy Ultraviolet-code Ops unit, known formally as USEPSOC’s, the United States ExtraPlanetary Special Operations Command, the 13th Ranger Regiment 5th Battalion’s “External Environments Defense Services Mobile Assault” platoon.  Informally, they were known as “Broken Mirror”.  This specially-selected team that the Major addressed was composed of the most elite warriors from Broken Mirror.

 “That is correct.  What happens is we activate a portal, an energy gateway, that extends a piece of that other place, the intended destination, into our own geospatial area.  The two areas temporarily intersect and create a bridge, one from the other, that we can cross and then the destination retracts it, that extension, back to where it should be, very distant from us in space and in time.”

 “But this place, ‘the destination’ as you call it, sir, has been described as extremely hostile to intrusion from matter, organic and inorganic matter, from our area of space.  Is that right?”

 “Yes.”

 “Can you define this ‘hostility’, sir?”

 Holloway nodded his head as he considered the merits of the question. “Well, without specific case evidence to go on, you have to understand that this is mostly theory, but its theory based on solid intelligence.  The term ‘hostility’ refers not so much to the physical as it does to the cultural.  It’s not a science fiction fantasy kind of a thing, like matter and antimatter, and it’s not a ‘mirror universe’ thing where you’re liable to meet a physically identical version of yourself, only evil.  It’s societal.  You know what xenophobia is, right?  Good.  Then simply define our use of the word ‘hostile’ to be an attempt to define a psychotic level of xenophobia unlike anything we’ve ever encountered.  To the inhabitants of this realm, the planet we have unofficially named ‘Brimstone’, any evidence of our existence as offworlders alien to their area of space is anathematic --- just the idea we come from someplace else will be enough to drive them into a killing frenzy.”