Defending Liberty: Book Two of the Liberty Trilogy

by Art Theocles

Overview

Reeling from the trials and tribulations of surviving a time shift and an enemy temporal attack during America's Revolutionary War; Nik, Sid, and John contemplate their lives moving forward in America's past. They had long ceased thinking of ?home? as the place in the year 2010 where they prospered with their wives, loved their children, and enjoyed the modern amenities that life in the twenty-first century afforded them.

Trapped in the past, our friends now struggle to endure in parts and times unknown, hoping for peace and quiet to contemplate their future. A second temporal event drives them to engage people of their history for answers and direction. When they learn that they have shifted to another of America's domestic conflicts, the men soon discover a sinister and dangerous contamination that again threatens America's survival.

Invading temporal forces present a complex puzzle for the three friends to discover, decipher, and solve as America's time runs out. Desperation and unusual circumstances force Nik, Sid, and John to use extreme measures, and some modern-day tactics, to defend their nation's freedom and history. Will the temporal contamination and evil disrupt America's historical timelines as it fights to maintain its borders, its liberty, and its very sovereignty?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781491707319
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/29/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	366
File size:	423 KB

Read an Excerpt

Defending Liberty

Book Two of the Liberty Trilogy

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By Art Theocles

iUniverse LLC

Copyright © 2013 Art Theocles
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-0730-2

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CHAPTER 1

Mission: Home Again

The men had long ceased their thinking of home as the place in the year 2010 where they had lived, prospered with their wives, loved their children, and enjoyed the modern amenities that life in the twenty-first century afforded them in a free and thriving society. These men had been leaned by the years, scarred by the weather, fatigued by the trials of war, and emotionally drained by the displacement in time caused by a Soviet temporal attack from their Cold War years. It was an attack that had ripped them from a remote hillside in South Carolina and deposited them into America's past on the outskirts of a besieged and dying city. In an instant, home became so much less—and so much more to these three friends.

On this day, October 24, 1781, five days after witnessing the surrender of General Cornwallis to his American foes at Yorktown from a small boat on the York River, the men (often referred to as "the boys" in the Liberty Series novels) were making their way home: a small, hand-built cabin that sits near the remote location in the hills of South Carolina, from which they had vanished from in their year, 2010. It is the place they retreated to from the outskirts of Charleston to simply "stay out of the way of history" after their abrupt time shift into America's past. Their only goal was to quietly live out their lives and try to figure out what had really happened to them, stay alive, and find a way back home to the year 2010 ... that didn't work out exactly as planned.

Traveling south and east, the boys had reached an area on the North Carolina coast where they felt infinitely more comfortable, a place where they could stow their very old and trusty rowboat and get back to the land. The three had managed their watery travels well enough in the previous weeks and months, but the altercation of twelve days before with the fleeing British vessel, a struggle that had nearly ended their lives, had left them quite happy to return to solid ground.

"Just walk. We'll head west. Easy as that and home to the comforts of C-10," Nik commented under his breath.

"Ha! Is this the same person who thought that camping, sleeping in a hut—you're killing me! Comforts of home! Are you the same guy who didn't want to go with us in 2010 unless there was great food and a huge gun range? Bacon, rifles, tons of ammunition, and by the way, you do remember that you insisted it had to be in the winter, so you wouldn't get 'overheated'?"

Nik just looked at John with a stare of acknowledgment. Sid simply enjoyed the banter of his friends.

Nik grumbled again in his typical fashion, groaned, picked his pack up, and began moving forward while he pointed to the west. "No race, guys ... a nice leisurely walk, a jaunt, a gentle schlep, a saunter in that general direction, a—"

Then silence ... total silence ... an absolute silence rivaled only by that of the complete vacuum of space, coupled with a dark, dense whirl of immovable motion. Nik struggled to raise his head with the urgent (or horrified) perception that he was in the complete airless vacuum of space. The effect tricked his mind and astounded him for a moment, which to all of them felt like an eternity. Sid was trying to speak with only an odd garble. John was motionless and silent.

It's happening again! Nik thought wildly. How is this possible?

The effect was different from the first they had experienced on the hillside in 2010. The complete silence and immobilization of their central nervous systems appeared to deaden any pain if, in fact, there was any to be felt. The discomfort came only from the inability to move; this might even have been somehow contrived in the deep reaches of the men's psyche. There was no way of knowing the true reality of what was actually transpiring.

A surge now! A sharp feeling of motion—a powerful surge forward was perceived—a rush in direction that affected their bodies to the point of near physical sickness. Sid knew they were not actually moving, but images and scenes raced by them at an incredible speed; the resulting perception was of forward movement. John simply closed his eyes and tried to ride out whatever was happening.

The three maintained themselves as best they could, and after a time, a "rough focus" was harnessed in the blur of it all. There were two specific instances in which each of them felt he was going to "land" somewhere as their surroundings slowed for a brief moment, only to be followed by a sickening acceleration into the beyond. During these two periods, they could discern faint images ... treeless hills, fog, lush meadows, green hills, a valley, a farmhouse, and farmland. These images were not disturbing and appeared to be real places of serenity and quiet. The third and final instance "felt" as if it was creating itself in front of them, only with a more dire vibration, and one difference ... it was not slowing down! The scene flashed at them in an uncontrolled stream of chaos! Clouds! Ocean! Smoke! Fire! Screams! Blood! Something, very solid now, approaching at incredible speed ... made by the hands of man.

Smash! Shooting pain overwhelmed the three men as they hit something hard and solid; the immobilization and numbness of the effect abandoned them as quickly as it had earlier engulfed them. The shock of the jolt back to consciousness registered as nothing less than debilitating. The boys exited the shift in incredible pain and were stunned, bewildered, and unable to function or process information in any directed fashion.

Nik felt intense heat and a flowing motion as he spun his body around to escape the feeling of imminent death by incineration. He could make out a dark gloom, but all of his senses were not yet responding as he kept his face close to whatever surface he had landed upon at the end of an apparent fall. He tried to slow his breathing and calm his mind to the point of logical thought. He became desperate to regain some semblance of composure and locate his compatriots; he feared for an instant that he was alone.

Sid choked on what he believed was thick, black smoke and rolled left along a boarded surface that he had now come to rest on. He had landed on an unknown and unfamiliar surface from a considerable distance that he perceived as directly above where they now were. His thoughts quickly shifted to the pain in his legs and arms, and it made him wonder just how high up they had fallen from. He closed his eyes for a moment to contain the pain and reboot himself for coming events that he knew were sure to follow.

John felt as if his torso were hanging off a ledge of some sort and fought to hold himself onto the yet-unknown structure he had apparently hit or landed on during what he had perceived to be a considerable descent. John wasn't at all clear on where he may have dropped from or where he dropped to; he only knew the sense of earthly gravity sharply tugging at his body and soul.

They heard voices in the distance; it was their native tongue of English. They understood only a single phrase in all of the mayhem and chaos: "Abandon ship!"

Sid picked his head up. He was covered in soot and the stench of smoke—a pungent, sharp, rank, and foul odor. He rolled over to John, who was only half-secured to the object they had landed on. A thought had Sid quickly looking around at their surroundings. "A ship! Guys! We're on a ship! Be careful where you roll." Then he quickly added, "And it's on fire!" John quickly scurried to his feet as Sid helped him on deck.

"Fire!" John exclaimed loudly and moved over to Nik's side.

Sid quickly looked around and spotted a piece of land off to the right side of the ship. He then identified something else and thought aloud, "An object, a helm, something that steers this hulk!" He stumbled toward the wheel as the ship began to list to one side and then the other with a shudder. He began to turn the wheel, which he hoped would affect the vessel's course in a specific direction. The wheel was difficult to move at first, and barely responsive to his full weight leaning into it. He initially steered in the wrong direction, and then corrected his course to get the near-inferno of a wreck pointed in the direction of the land he had spotted just moments before. He fought with the ship for a time. When he was convinced they could not miss the landmass in the distance, he went to aid the others, yelling and carrying on like an old salty dog.

"Abandon ship!" yelled Sid. "Land at two o'clock—jump when we reach the rocks!"

Nik, now shaking off the ills of the temporal effect, thought, Abandon ship. That's the second time I have heard that today ... Rocks? What? "What the hell are you talking about?" Nik loudly inquired. In that instant, Sid almost rolled off the deck on the left side and caught himself at the last minute.

"Not far now!" yelled Sid.

Nik continued to listen for the other voices he had thought he heard, but all was silent except for the fire, the creaking sounds he couldn't identify, Sid yelling out instructions, and the oddest sound of all ... waves crashing all around them. It made sense, he thought, I caught sight of a ship ... I think. He began to work at clearing his head again when he heard Sid screaming.

"Jump! Jump now!" Sid sounded like he was running hard away from the scene of an impossible and dire situation.

Nik then heard two distinct splashes and felt a jolt followed by a groaning sound. He thought, This is the sound of the ship dying and giving up its final salute to the world and the sea, which will soon have it for all eternity. Still disoriented, but better in control of himself, he rolled over to the side of the ship where he had heard the splashes, and as gracefully as he could, fell off the ship, aiming for a not-so-rocky spot in the surf. Surfacing quickly, he struggled to get himself and his gear to the beach where Sid had steered them; the smoke was thick again. Between the water, his difficulties in making land, and the choking, billowing smoke, Nik was having a hard time of it.

John splashed over to Nik and grabbed his rifles and backpack while pulling on Nik's arm.

"I'm okay ... I'm good, just a damn strange way to show up somewhere!" Nik complained. He sat down on a rock shelf just off the beach and away from the burning vessel. He guessed that they had just jumped from a British vessel; it made sense, as those were the voices he thought he had heard in the blur of the shift to this place and—he quickly assumed—time. His thoughts spun around for a moment, finding obvious and clear contradictions to all the notions that just ran through his mind; he hoped they were at least in their history.

Sid was using a large tub to douse water and sand on the flames that engulfed the now-beached and burning vessel. Nik assumed that by running into the rocky shore, the vessel might be taking on more water, and by sinking, the flames would become submerged and subside on their own.

"Stay here, Nik," John demanded. "Too many cooks spoil the soup." Nik looked puzzled and waited as John had instructed.

John ran off to where Sid was feverishly throwing water and sand everywhere and began to help in the fire duties as Nik just sat and looked around. He prepared his AR-15 with a magazine and charged the weapon, as he had no idea what would happen next in the drama he would call "the deliverance." Unfortunately, the little he had witnessed so far made him yearn for their place in South Carolina and home at C-10.

The water was littered with debris, timbers, cans, paper, material that looked like fabric from a sail, and plenty of items that they could not readily identify. It looked as if a windstorm had hit a giant garage sale near a beach, and all had blown into the sea. Nik found it odd that with the steady wind, there was no ocean odor, but he quickly discounted that concern as he concluded that the smoke had permeated everything around them—the air, their clothes, his nose. Everything smelled of smoke ... and death.

CHAPTER 2

Here We Go Again

The wind blew steadily now as Nik sat and held his head in his blackened, grimy hands. He stared down at the rocky surface of the place the boys had been since the shift, and Nik felt wholly drained. The realities of the events of the last week had sapped him of his energy, immediate will, wits, and any ounce of freshness or cleanliness that he may have had a week ago.

Nik slowly picked up his head. The sunlight hurt his eyes as the grime and the spray of the nearby surf formed an oily buildup in the creases of his face. The filthy mixture stung his pores and made his mood even fouler. His eyes adjusted as he watched his friends complete the near three-day pilfering of the scuttled and burned British vessel. He was not sure if it was a sloop, a brig, or maybe something a bit smaller. The vessel they landed on after the shift was a burning wreck that saved them from an almost certain drowning as they came to this place. The wreck was beached helplessly and not so peacefully perched on the island's rocky shore. It gave up its treasures to the boys for what Nik could only imagine was most certainly, and very probably, an extended stay of some unknown duration that would constitute more than simply a long vacation.

Where are we? wondered Nik as he quickly corrected himself, knowing the real question also must include and mainly should have been, When are we? Sid and John appeared to have fully recovered. They were taking full advantage of the stores and tools that the disabled and ruined craft was giving up. For the past few days, Sid and John had been collecting and piling up all of the salvageable goods, boxes, sacks, and other bits and pieces, including timber from the shipwreck, for future use.

Nik observed his friends dart about collecting all that could be had from the ruined and dead remains of the vessel that Sid crashed into the island he now sat on. Without their heavy packs and completely unencumbered, Sid and John collected and transported everything worth anything to a place for inspection and assessment.

"I am not doing without this time!" Sid professed, trying to turn the tide of Nik's disposition. "We have this wreck and all its goodies, and we are going to use them!"

Nik agreed with a half smile, "You're right, Sid, no need to be uptight about it. It is ours. We ... saved it from a sure and total loss to the ... water." He pointed to the huge expanse of the lake, or river, or whatever body of water it actually was that now surrounded them.

"Ha! Look who's talking about being uptight!" Sid blurted, peering at Nik in disbelief over the accusation that Sid had a foul mood when all, including Nik, knew that Nik, and only Nik, was indeed the guilty party in the foul-mood club.

John piped in somewhat sharply, "Not uptight! You do realize that we went through that time thing again, don't you?" John knew the answer to his question but wanted his compatriots to begin thinking about and discussing the obvious predicament they were embroiled in ... again.

Nik cringed at both stark truths, as he knew they had been avoiding the ugly certainty to this point. Yes, his mood stunk, and yes, they all knew they had shifted in time again. Once again, the obvious question at hand was: how would they succeed in their survival trick this time? That question was on all of their minds.

Their survival instincts had them scrambling for the past several days, but they were devoid of any real direction. One thing, however, was sure; they had their weapons ready, they were on edge, and they were ready and willing to use them if they needed to. That said, there was no real need for that kind of alert condition, as they had seen no one, no ships, no sign of humanity except for some distant reports ... thunder from some of the summer thunderheads, they thought, or maybe cannons. There was no telling what the noises were exactly, but they did know what noise they had avoided talking about—their temporal quandary, the shift to somewhere else, or more correctly, some when else.

Sid tried to break the ice of the avoided topic. "We know what we went through," he spoke loudly while trying to talk over the now gusty and howling wind. "We all know what we went through!" A longer than a slight pause yielded with a frustrated Sid again stating, "We know—"

"Let's get out of this wind! C'mon ... c'mon!" John screamed, cutting Sid off midsentence as he grabbed their arms and pulled them to a sheltered spot.

They both nodded, and John led them away from the shoreline.

Nik hadn't been watching the activities of John and Sid over the past days when they were away from the beach—only their activities at the scuttled and charred remains of the vessel of their deliverance. During this time, he continued staring out across the vast expanse of water that appeared to surround him. He remained vigilant. All the meanwhile, Sid and John assembled and sorted all that they had been collecting, and they began building a makeshift shelter from the timbers, boxes, barrels, and everything else from the shipwreck.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Defending Liberty by Art Theocles. Copyright © 2013 Art Theocles. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse LLC.
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