Ch. 5 - Welkin

The sand swirled.  It was nearly impossible to see, though the host, Prince Akbar, had chuckled that this was mild.  This prince had been cast off, excommunicated from the royal family of the small, oil-rich Persian Gulf nation.  He was too ambitious, and his ambitions led him into associations with several Middle East terrorist groups.  It was the kind of thing his family, on good terms with the United States, tried to avoid.

But he had access to hundreds of millions of dollars, even in his exiled state.  He tried contracting mercenaries and drug lord.  He had from time-to-time financed Al-Qaeda and other lesser known but far more dangerous groups.  He was not particularly religious.  Prince Akbar simply wants things in place, the chessmen properly positioned so that he could overthrow his country’s government, assume power, and raise the profile of his nation in the region.  Anyone who died in his quest for power, even his own relatives, was an expected and acceptable loss. 

On this occasion, he was sending a large force against the royal troops in Southeastern Saudi Arabia.  His small army had gained a foothold on the coastline two nights ago.  In normal circumstances, the Saudi military would have no trouble dispatching this glorified thug in less than a week.  But in the initial battle, the Saudis lost all communication and later reconnaissance revealed their entire battalion to have been routed.  And no one in the Saudi government knew what had happened.

Now, 100 Saudi tanks supported two infantry battalions, nearly 1000 soldiers, and 5 helicopter gunships stood within view of a force that appeared to be about 100 soldiers and 7 cranes of some sort.

“<What are those things?>”[i] General Ahmed wondered. “<Get me a description of those cranes or whatever they are,>” he barked at a subordinate. 

“<Your majesty, this is much larger force,>” the nervous contract soldier reported to Akbar.  “<We will not repeat our success.>”

Prince Akbar turned to his new colleague, retired American Lt. Colonel and now wanted criminal, Augustus Shenko.  Shenko nodded. 

Shenko turned to his second-in-command.  “Ready the Assault Warrior-7’s.”  The 7^th version of Shenko’s assault suits were by far the best, in his opinion.  Each was an armored suit 12 feet tall piloted by an ex-American military man who Vengeance had managed to free from the prison facility at Ft. Leavenworth.  These were ex-navy SEALS, ex-marines, and ex-army rangers.  All were destined for life at Leavenworth for their crimes.  Now they were getting rich, testing Shenko’s latest invention.  This would be a live test.

The battle was fast and furious, but decidedly one-sided.  The Saudi troops, though holding a seemingly insurmountable advantage in numbers were no match for the “Assault Warrior-7’s.”  In a panic, they radioed Washington in hopes of American air support.  Shenko using equipment of his own design was able to completely disrupt the navigation systems of the American jets.  By the time the American planes were on-line and Saudi reinforcements arrived, the oilfields were burning and all 100 Saudi tanks had been destroyed.  Shenko and his team had vanished into the Persian Gulf in a stealth submarine.  The Saudis lost many men and billions of dollars in oil revenue.

Half a world away, the Powers family was gathering for dinner in the Kilmarnock home.  Dean could not avoid discussing his incident with Billy Rebuks even if he wanted to.  The talk had made it all over town by the time he got home.  He needed time to process it all. 

“Phenomenal.”  Matt had now said this word a third time.  He was referring to everything that had taken place since the night the six kids fell into the Chesapeake Bay that was aglow from no-one-knows-what.  Igor had had the incident at camp and had not been seen since.  Now Dean was cracking bones and parking lots.  He and Melanie were on-edge.  His brother Rob and sister-in-law Candy, Igor’s parents, were a wreck.  Somehow, Matt was more interested than worried.  Somehow, he felt he knew his nephew was not hurt or in danger.  “Phenomenal.”

“Hey Dean,” Ben said smiling.  “Maybe you could be a superhero.”

“Ben,” Melanie chided.

But he continued.  “We could call you Phenom.”

“I am going for a run.”  Eddy announced.

“You haven’t finished eating,” Melanie responded.

“I just need to move a bit and you won’t let me run after dark.”

She looked at him.

“I’ll finish eating as soon as I get back.”

Finally Matt said, “Be back in 30 minutes.”  Melanie glared in his direction, but did not say anything.

Eddy really was done with this.  Since they had fallen in the Bay, his parents could not stop talking about it.  But he felt great.  All he wanted to do was run.  He felt so good, he was thinking about world records.  When he did a 10-mile a few days ago, he average 4 minutes 20 seconds per mile.  When he was done, he wasn’t really tired at all.

On this warm summer night, he ran to clear his thoughts.  His parents had raised him to pray and he prayed best when he ran.  He asked God to show him what all of this meant.  No answer came except the feeling that he and his brothers and cousins were entering the beginning of something, some story.  He felt like they were just scratching the surface.  However, Eddy, wasn’t given to speculations, so for now, he ran.  Normally he would pay attention to his pace.  But this night, he just ran.  He didn’t really notice where he was or how fast he moved. 

He was out of the center of town where they lived, running along a cornfield.  He knew the farmer, so he turned in to run among the cornrows, something he did often.  A strong breeze moved across from his left to right.  It felt good.  In fact, Eddy felt like his body was drinking in the breeze. 

A cloud cover was descending, almost like a fog.  Eddy felt like the cloud was coming to him, like he called it.  Or it called him.  He really did not know.  He just ran into the cloud.  The eeriness of the quiet, the cornfield, the cloud bank all gave way to energy.  Eddy ran and felt himself climbing like running up a hill. 

Often in distance races, Eddy would run even with the top competition until they hit a tough hill.  At that point the other runners would gasp as Eddy sped up.  By the time things flattened out, the others were running, but their wills were broken.  Eddy won easily. 

Now, he had the same sensation, of running up a hill.  It suddenly occurred to him that it was odd to feel this way running through a flat cornfield.  Already, the thought had gnawed at him that he did not remember fog covering this farm in the late afternoon.  What was going on?

Eddy ran to a break in the fog and emerged into a startling discovery.  He had in fact been climbing – the cloud.  He was now 100’s of feet in the air.  He looked down to see the farm, the town, and miles and miles in each direction.  The cloud was dissipating and he began hurling toward the earth, picking up speed as he fell.  Instinctively, he focused on forcing himself to stop. 

It was if a wind emitted from his body.  No, that’s not right.  He controlled the surrounding air and whipped into a wind so that it broke his fall to the point that he was suspended in the air, held aloft by an upward blowing wind, about 20 feet above the cornfield.  He realized that he controlled this.  His fear was gone.  He laughed out loud.

Then Eddy summoned a wind to shoot him into the sky at a blinding speed.  He found his body unaffected by the air friction.  Cold did not bother him.  He flew and flew.  A plane taking off from Richmond’s airport was ascending.  Eddy couldn’t help himself.  He called on the wind that was his to control and soared alongside the plane.  Passengers looking the Western sunset were shocked to see a 14-year-old boy outside, in the air, smiling and waving to them.  Just to drive the point home, Eddy flew right across the front of the plane in full view of the flight crew. 

He carried on like this well after dark before heading back toward Kilmarnock.  Beneath him he could see the shimmering blue of police light.  Horrified, he realized the squad cars were at his house.  How late was he? 

He landed a block away and slipped in the back door.  His mother ran to him and embraced him.  His father started into a harangue, and then stopped himself.  Matt explained to the police that it had been a misunderstanding.  They left, and Eddy told his tale. 

After an hour of talking, Matt and Melanie sent the boys to their rooms, and headed to bed themselves.  Eddy could hear Matt on his cell phone.  “Rob, hey, it’s Matt.  Yeah, um, I need to tell you about Eddy.  What?  Merone and Henry?  Seriously? …”

Eddy, Dean, and Ben kept talking.  As they did, Dean was on his computer.  Eddy shook his head.  Dean was always on that computer.  And Ben worshipped Dean.  Eddy just wanted to go out and fly again. 

“The sky; the vault of Heaven.”

“What?”  Eddy looked at Dean. 

Dean replied, “The vault of Heaven.  It is the definition of the word ‘Welkin,’ a middle English word for the firmament or the sky.”

Ben smiled, “Phenom and Welkin.  Two superheroes.”

Eddy looked back.  “What about you?”

Ben’s face turned pensive.  “Well, I do have something to tell you.”

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[i] Dialogue in < > is translated from Arabic.