torg 01 - Storm Knights Read Online Free Page B

he had it filled anyway, and carried it with him from missionary post to missionary post. And, to his surprise, he found that he would celebrate the mass more often than he had imagined.
    He reached down to pull the kit from the debris. The case was heavy, a familiar weight in an unfamiliar time. He wiped the dirt from the brass name plate. Christopher Bryce, S.J., the plate read. Christopher, he thought. Christ bearer. Perhaps his parents had been prophetic when they gave him the name at his christening. They were perfect parents, his father once told him, whose only imperfection was their children. Bryce never understood exactly what the old man meant, and he never really wanted to. For all of their idiosyncracies, he loved them dearly.
    He placed the mass kit on the side and continued his search. He found his parents thirty minutes later, crushed beneath a roof beam. They weren't buried under tons of rubble as he had expected. They were both killed by the same heavy wooden beam, their bodies exposed to the rain.
    That would never do.
    Bryce spent the next few hours pulling his parents' bodies from the wreckage of the home they loved. He carried them across the street, one at a time, into the ruins of St. Ignatius. Part of the church still stood, one wall and part of the steeple, providing some protection from the unending downpour.
    The priest retrieved his mass kit and administered last rites for his parents. He performed the duties of his calling with loving care. Then, with reverence, he buried them in the best tomb available, using the consecrated stones of the ruined church to form their final resting place.
    "Goodbye, mom, dad," Bryce whispered to the stones. He placed a kiss atop the cairn, then wiped at his teary eyes. He stood there watching the burial cairn for a long time.
    9
    "Dr. Hachi Mara-Two reports on her theory of the cosmverse to the General Council of the Academy of Sciences ."
    Mara, she thought as the images started to fill her mind. Call me Mara.
    "Cosm. A dimension where a particular set of laws holds sway. A specific reality that can be quite different from another reality."
    Mara listened to her own voice explain the theory she had set forth to the Academy of Sciences two years ago. It was just after her fourteenth birthday, and the General Council dismissed her findings as the rantings of a young girl. A very gifted genius, they admitted, but a young girl nonetheless.
    "Our own cosm is just one of a multitude of dimensions that, together, form what I refer to as the cosmverse. As our own universe contains the whole of our reality, the cosmverse contains the whole of all realities. And what is possible here, using our laws of science, might not be possible in another cosm, where a completely different set of laws govern the workings of their world."
    Mara adjusted the clarity of the input, reflexively checking the cable that led from her skull jack to the main terminal. Oh, they were impressed when the prodigy graduated from college at age ten. They clapped ceaselessly when she received a Ph.D. in physics at age twelve. And they almost wet themselves with joy when the child genius received her second Ph.D — this one in microengineering — one year later. But when their prodigy, their trained seal, proposed something real, something that shook the status quo, they simply dismissed her.
    "My findings also suggest that these cosms can be connected, allowing us to travel to another dimension for exploration, to make contact, whatever we deem appropriate. But there is a flipside to my findings. As we can travel to another cosm, the inhabitants of another cosm can travel here, to our reality."
    The young woman unplugged herself from the terminal and took a deep breath. She had examined her research records backwards and forwards, over and over again. Always her conclusion was the same. The invasion had been her fault. She was to blame for all the death and destruction, and it was about to happen