The following is an excerpt from the novel "Caitlin Star and the Rise of the Barbarians" Caitlin Star book 3 by James J. Caterino.
Copyright 2014, 2015 James J. Caterino All Rights Reserved
Caitlin felt sick inside hearing the
screams and the cries from below as the creatures of the jungle fled in terror
from the raging firebombs.
Homes were being destroyed. Life
was being extinguished. Entire cultures and maybe even wholesale species could
be lost forever; all because a former U.S. Senator fancied himself the conduit
of an invisible man in the sky. Cross was not hard to figure out. He wanted
subjects to impose his will on. Subjects to worship his perverted version of God,
and by default Cross himself, since only he could speak for God. His philosophy
was clear and defined; get greedy, take from anyone and everyone and especially
from the earth itself, and leave an endless trail of dead bodies, burned lives,
charred souls, and toxic waste by the truckload.
The
former cruise ship turned death ship continued to launch a barrage of fireballs
into the jungle as it chugged up the Congo. It had to be stopped now. If that
ship crossed through the next channel and continued bombing, they would be on
the other side of the rift. With no more natural barriers to contain the raging
flames—the entire Triangle could burn into a wasteland and the fires would burn
for months from coast to coast. Paradise would be lost. With the rain forest
gone and one of the few remaining habitable zones turned into a wasteland. With
nothing left to oxygenate the already depleted atmosphere, life itself in post-apocalyptic
earth could be over. The planet would become nothing but a barren, inhospitable
rock. Earth would become another Mars.
Caitlin
could not let that happen. This death ship had to be stopped and stopped right
now. They had a plan—a long shot that Caitlin had to turn into a sure shot. It
was a plan Lori and Lithgow had dubbed, “Operation Deathstar.”
She
tapped the radio earpiece and microphone Lori had made for her.
“I
am at the target spot. On the plateau trail, across from the river island, just
above the cliff overlooking the rocks where the underground river from the Lost
City merges into the Congo,” Caitlin said. “Are you reading me?”
“Roger
that,” Lori said.
“Okay
sister,” Caitlin said. “You’re on. This is your moment. Your turn to be the
hero. Just tell me what to do?”
“What
is the exact location of the ship?” Lori asked.
Caitlin
looked into her binoculars and focused in on the ship of doom.
“Coming
around the island split via the eastern channel side. The one further away from
me,” Caitlin said.
“Give
me one minute,” Lori said. “The Guardian coming back to life has created an
energy bubble. The surge in transmission power if off the charts. I may be able
to use this to tap into an old satellite network, bounce a tracking signal off
of you and the ship and give you the precise time to go for it.”
There
was a beat of silence as Caitlin heard her furiously tapping a keyboard. Before
she locked into the mission Caitlin had to ask her the nagging anxiety
bothering her.
“Any
sign of Gunner yet?” Caitlin asked.
“Not
so far,” Lori said. “But no worries. Lithgow says we still have some time. The
gateway is stable and has yet to show any power slippage. And you know Gunner.
He’ll get here in time. He finds a way. He always does.”
“I
know,” Caitlin said, more out of an auto response than actually believing it.
Caitlin knew—as Gunner himself had
taught her—she had to focus only on what she could control. Her mentor’s fate
and the idiosyncrasies of temporal quantum mechanics were out of her hands. But
what was in her hands was the fate of this death ship driving up the Congo and
spewing out destruction. And what would soon be in her hands—was Cross’s
scrawny neck when she snapped it. She really hoped that he was not on board.
Going down with that wicked ship was far too easy of a death for such an agent
of evil.
“Okay, I have a fix on you and the
ship,” Lori said. “Inputting schematics and making calculations….now.”
Another beat of silence passed.
“Come on sister,” Caitlin said.
“Don’t leave me hanging. Talk to me.”
“Shit,”
Lori said. “This will still be doable. But you are going to have to really
sprint fast to get enough momentum for the jump. I mean like really, really
fast.”
“Hey,
it’s me,” Caitlin quipped. “How fast?”
“Like
superhero fast,” Lori said. “Faster than you ever did in the one-hundred meter
at Steel Valley or Pitt. Faster than…well…any human has even ran before. Husain
Bolt was once clocked at twenty-eight MPH. I need you to do thirty.”
“I
got it,” Caitlin said. “Just be my eyes in the sky. You call the plays. I
execute them. Just like the old days.
“Oracle
and the Black Canary,” Lori said.
“There
you go,” Caitlin said. “How long till the starting gun?”
“In about four minutes and twenty-two
seconds,” Lori said.
“Let me know when we hit thirty
seconds,” Caitlin said.
“Roger that,” Lori said.
Caitlin took the next four minutes
to empty her mind, stretch out muscles, focus every fiber of her being, and
engage in the transformative visualization technique she had been mastering
since she turned thirteen years-old and was rescued by a vigilante anti-hero
named Gunner Star.
“Thirty second countdown begins
right…now,” Lori announced in her earpiece.
It was now time for operation
Deathstar.
Caitlin secured her very best
javelin-style throwing spear, doused the tip in the concentrated explosive goo
Lori and Lithgow had conjured up for her. Then she crouched down into a
sprinter’s stance, and waited for Lori’s start command.
“Ready…Set…Go!”
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