The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption Read Online Free PDF Page A

provided to certain Zygan citizens, like Sentinels, and
catascopes. And, using them without authorization is a crime. There
were several thousand megabytes of policies and procedures that
guided and limited the use of Ergals, all vetted personally by the
Omega Archon, which we had to upload into our brains before our
Ergals were assigned to us and activated.
    For example, they didn’t want us using Ergals
to turn the school bully into a pig or to go back and buy up all
the stock in Microsoft in 1986. Darn! Unfortunately, we weren’t
allowed to use Ergals to change history either. Time travel was
only allowed with specific authorization for a specific assignment,
along with strict instructions to only “observe and preserve” while
in the past. As much as you might be tempted to assist the
Resistance in assassinating Hitler or to warn President Kennedy’s
driver to avoid the grassy knoll, such unauthorized actions would
land you a visit to the Omega Archon and an extended sentence in
Hell, flames and all. And, even worse, if you survived our King’s
Hades, you could be exiled from Zygfed forever. So, we get these
wonderful tools with all these options, but the rules for using
them are super-strict and the consequences of violations dire. I
think that’s called “free will”.
    Or in my case, “a challenge”.

Chapter 3
    Terror Time
     
    Hollywood—present day
     
    “We’re done for! There’s no escape!” cried
Spud. His T-shirt was in tatters and rivulets of sweat trickled
down his muscular biceps as he sprinted ahead of the pack of
rapacious paparazzi. He leaped into my Zoom Cruiser through the
open right gull-wing door and, pulling it closed, rolled into the
passenger seat of what, to casual observers, resembled a late model
DeLorean car.
    “I’ve got it,” I said as I locked the doors
and ordered, “Windows opaque.” Our side and back windscreens became
darkened and impenetrable. I activated navigation and scanning
holos and observed that the advancing paparazzi were bearing down
on us. Gunning the engine of the Zoom cruiser, I streaked off down
Cahuenga Boulevard, barely missing a camera-laden aggressor who had
leaped in front of our car.
    As we sped away, the hungry pack of
photographers dispersed to their vans and SUVs, intent on motorized
pursuit. Their driving skills were no match for my razor-sharp
reflexes and the Zoom’s touchpad ‘fly-by-Ergal’ steering, but, with
the heavy Friday afternoon traffic making the streets an
action-film obstacle course, I wasn’t able to lose the paparazzi as
quickly as I’d hoped.
    Playing a futuristic space agent on TV gives
you a great cover if you get caught working as a futuristic space
agent on a real assignment. You can pretend the spaceship, the
weapons, and the special effects are all a publicity stunt. On the
other hand, being on TV does have its drawbacks. And they were
gaining on us as we zoomed towards Burbank.
    As we neared the studio, I steered a sudden
hard right turn through a bolted aluminum fence into an empty
construction site. Fortunately, the Zoom Cruiser’s titanium body
trumped the chicken wire, and we were inside the lot without a
scratch. The starcruiser’s tires bounced roughly over the packed
rocks and dirt and then lurched forward and down with a sickening
drop into a multi-storey well that had been dug out waiting for a
future skyscraper’s foundation—and additional building funds. I
could hear the screeching of paparazzi brakes as they tried to
follow my moonshiner’s turn into the site. I could also hear Spud’s
cry as we fell into the pit, “Lev!”
    “I’ve got it!” I said confidently as, once
below the lip of the pit, I invisible-ized my cruiser and activated
levitation. Mere inches from the bottom of the abyss, the cruiser
began to rise and, its wheels quietly retracting, invisibly glided
up past the rows of paparazzi vehicles that were skidding to a stop
at the rim of the excavated hollow. Hovering, I giggled as