The Custodians of the Fiery Photons

By R.S. Freckleton

The battle appears lost.

The Rainbow Alliance is shattered and the Family Unity Party is unstoppable. Nothing stands between the FUP and its utter domination.

Jake’s university life is destroyed as his friends and former comrades are hunted down in the moral purge. He is forced to use every ounce of his Guardian training to survive, even then tragedy strikes.

Yet there is a strange flicker of hope held out by James Grimwold, a scientist turned mad by studying the strange world of quantum nuclear physics for far too long.

A device, produced in his laboratory, could be the salvation of the Rainbow Alliance. Jake’s Guardian saviour, Darryn, is determined that it and its inventor will survive the purge.

Events hurtle toward the climactic final battle between the Family Unity Party and the Rainbow Alliance but who will gain victory?

This is the final and stunning ending to the highly acclaimed The Guardians Of The Rainbow, and The Keepers of the Sunken Way. One reviewer said, “James Bond clashes with fascist Britain against the most beautiful love story we’ve read in years. Fortunately 007 is fighting for equality and love, not the government.” www.book-reviewer.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mirador Publishing
• Release date: Jun 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781912192250

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The Custodians of the

Fiery Photons

By

R. S. Freckleton

First Published by Mirador Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2017 by R. S. Freckleton

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All right reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the publishers or author. Excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

First edition: 2017

Any reference to real names and places are purely fictional and are constructs of the author. Any offence the references produce is unintentional and in no way reflect the reality of any locations involved.

A copy of this work is available though the British Library.

IBSN : 978-1-912192-25-0

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

The Guardians of the Rainbow

The Keepers of the Sunken Way

DEDICATION

To Andrew Phillips

Thanks for all your positive encouragement right from the very start of my writing adventure.

Prologue

According to legend, the home of the persecuted stood intact and proud, despite the first assault by the forces of darkness. The shield had protected the House of Many Colours (The Rainbow House) from bullets, shells, bombs and missiles. As the sun rose on the first day of defiance, those who had been cowering in the basements, ready to make a desperate dash for freedom, emerged and made their way up to the Room of Benign Decision. The brilliant rays of the early morning light, transformed by the multicoloured stained glass window, splashed a haphazard vibrancy onto the Great Crescent Table. Cheers and clapping rang out as those present from the Decapoly entered and took their places at the table. Entering last was the great leader and patriarch of the first alliance of the sexually oppressed, known simply as ‘One’. He stood by his chair in the middle of the table and surveyed the dozens before him. He took his time to speak, not wishing to dissipate the jubilant atmosphere of his followers. This was the last time he was to address his flock. His words were recorded by those who were there and passed down through the generations.

"My friends, I wish I could share your jubilation, but we have not prevailed. The shield has withstood a first attack, but our enemies will be back in force and we are now exposed. We have nowhere else to hide. We are therefore left with no option but to abandon our home and dissolve the Alliance. By my estimation, we have but a week to prepare. We must ensure that our youngsters are safe and are taken to a place where we can continue to nurture them. We must continue our struggle in different ways and maybe, for a time, that means we will have to work by ourselves with little help or encouragement. Do not despair. Our cause is just and we have sworn an oath never to be silenced and trampled down again. We may not have overcome, but we have not been beaten.

"We will be dispersed, but it is important that the ties that bind us are never forgotten. When we meet we must always greet each other as family members and do all we can to assist each other. I believe a second Alliance will form, more solid and secure than this one, untouchable by our foes, and a lasting home for our people for years to come. Cleave to that prospect and do all you can to make it come to pass.

"My time is nearly done. When the House falls, I shall relinquish my leadership and pass out of knowledge. You must look to others to direct your path and, like children who have grown up and left home, you must forge your own destiny.

I must speak with The Numbers and order things correctly. Carry on with your duties as normal while we organise the evacuation. My friends, I wish that fate and fortune will treat you kindly.

With that, he bowed low to those assembled in front of him, and they, despite their shock, silently bowed in return. Those who had crossed the threshold of this hallowed chamber of The Rainbow House, shuffled out as the great doors were silently closed behind them, leaving The Numbers to decide the future course of events.

The solemn ceremony of dissolution was carried out. On election or nomination, each Number had offered a gift indicating the skills and attributes that the donor brought to the collective leadership. Each in turn reclaimed their gift from the Cabinet of Shared Offerings. Those who were not present had their gift collected by another Number on their behalf.

It remains for us to organise an orderly evacuation, No1 said when the ceremony was complete. The youngsters must be the first to go. We can smuggle them out at night and take them down river by boat and then across to France. Annabelle will supervise this operation and No7 must go with her to maintain a stronghold across the Channel. The Operations Unit must systematically dismantle every piece of intelligence-gathering equipment. All data held on members of the Alliance must likewise be destroyed. All the personal belongings of those on operations must be dispatched to a place of safety. The building must be stripped of everything of value. On the morning of the seventh day, having checked that everyone else has gone, you and the Guardians must leave. I alone will remain to face the enemy.

The immediate outcry from the former Numbers was silenced by a raised hand.

It must be so, he said simply.

And so it came to pass. On the third day of defiance, in the early hours of the morning, a barge slipped silently from the underground dock below Rainbow House, carrying fifty bewildered teenagers, accompanying adults and their possessions. The capital slept as the hope for the future was smuggled out of the city that would destroy them. It is said that No1 watched the boat move downstream from his apartment window with tears rolling down his cheeks.

On the fourth and fifth days of defiance, the numbers of people working and living in The Rainbow House rapidly decreased as the building was systematically emptied. By the morning of the seventh day the remaining ex-Numbers and a few of the senior Guardians were all that were left. One by one they took their leave of No1 and made their way in inconspicuous groups of two or three, from the building. Even now there was no discernible presence watching the headquarters of the former Rainbow Alliance.

It is believed that No1 retired to the Room of Benign Decision, deployed the impenetrable shield and waited.

At about ten o’clock a sudden barrage of missiles struck the shield simultaneously. It was unclear where they had come from; possibly the warships positioned further down the Thames had been their starting point. Initially the shield held yet again, but after a few seconds a groan could be heard, like the subdued wailing of all the former inhabitants. Then a sharper sound of glass breaking rose in a crescendo to a deafening fortissimo as cracks spread across the transparent material with ever-increasing speed. Finally, the whole structure collapsed in a shower of glittering fragments. The surrounding area was littered with what appeared to be hail stones and shards of ice, but these would not melt however hot the weather. The Rainbow House was now defenceless.

The only authoritative account of what took place next was written down, sometime later, by Corporal Ryan Harris. He was one of the troops in the vanguard of the assault on The Rainbow House:

"I remember hearing the sound of the dome cracking and collapsing. I’ve never heard anything like it before or since. It was like ten blocks of flats all collapsing simultaneously. There was a lot of cheering from our guys. I didn’t join in. I hadn’t a clue what we were doing or who our enemy was. Our superiors kept saying they were a moral threat as well as a physical one, but the rumours were flying around that most of them were just ordinary men and women going about their everyday business.

"Anyhow, the crash of the plastic shield was the sign for us to move in. We’d been tipped off that the entrance was through the newsagent’s shop and I was in the first group that smashed its way in. I must say, I was scared. I was expecting a strong response and thought the risk of being shot was very high. However, it was just a newspaper shop with its shelves of magazines and sweets. I remember the papers being at least a week out of date and the place having a musty smell. Clearly the owners had left in a hurry without worrying too much about leaving stock behind.

"Well, we were confused by this. There was no obvious passage into the main building and we were wondering whether our superiors had got it wrong. Eventually, hidden at the back of the shop, we found an elevator that seemed quite out of keeping with everything else we’d seen. We had to prise the door open, but that was to no avail; the control panel wouldn’t work. In the end, we had to cut a hole in the top of the lift and use grappling hooks to clamber up the shaft to the one and only exit door, fifty feet above. Again, if there had been any resistance we would have been dead meat as we struggled to force open the door and access the upper level. There was an eerie silence as we waited for the laborious ascent of all twenty-eight members of the platoon, individually scaling the lift shaft. As we waited, I couldn’t help but notice the scale and the grandeur of the complex we had entered. Yes - all the furniture had been removed, but I could imagine this first room to be like a lounge in a high-class hotel.

"When we were all ready, we set off to scour the building. We went down the grand staircase situated in the far corner of this impressive room. Under orders, we went as far as we could go, descending to a basement where we found an empty car park and workshops. Systematically, we worked our way through each level, checking for any sign of life, but we found none. It was amazing what we found: offices, shops, a gym, a cinema, a library and even a chapel. As we worked our way higher we found a canteen and kitchens, laundry facilities and living quarters. Finally, when we got almost to the top of the building, there was a floor with a very imposing entrance hall, with large wooden doors spanning the height from the floor to the ceiling. The doors had large fancy wrought iron handles. They opened inwards and were not locked. I remember being one of the first to enter the room with its multicoloured light produced by a dazzling stained glass window covering the whole of the window space. There was a large crescent-shaped table and, facing us on its opposite side, there was, at last, a living human being, seated calmly in the central position of prominence. I remember him being an old man with white hair and a beard, dressed in a white gown, not dissimilar in type to a vicar’s cassock. His calmness and serenity were striking. He did not seem surprised at our entrance and indeed he said, ‘Welcome, I’ve been expecting you. I have given you this one chance to repent and promise to leave us in peace.’

"Our commanding officer had been given his script. He addressed the man sitting behind the table with peremptory disdain: ‘You are charged with offences of terrorism and moral corruption. I order you to declare the names of the inhabitants of this building and state where they are hiding.’

"I remember the old man smiling and replying, ‘Why on Earth would I do that? They are my friends and I have made sure they are safe from your clutches.’ Well, the commanding officer was none too pleased at that and pointed his rifle at the old man telling him to get up and come with us into custody. He threatened to beat the information out of him. The old man remained calm but his smile changed to a concerned frown. ‘I tire of this,’ he said, ‘you must leave now. You will get nothing from me and I am certainly going nowhere with you. You have twenty minutes to leave before our home starts to collapse. I have already sounded the alarm to evacuate the offices in the other half of the building.’

"The lieutenant was not expecting this response. I remember seeing his face go red with anxiety and the beads of sweat dripping from his forehead. The prospect of having to shoot a single, unarmed old man must have been weighing on his conscience. ‘I will not tell you again,’ he croaked, ‘if you do not move towards the door now I will be forced to shoot you.’

"The old man stared at my commanding officer and simply said, ‘No.’ The lieutenant ordered two of my comrades to manhandle the troublesome adversary out of the building, but as they approached, the old man raised his hand in a gesture of denial and blinding lights flashed all about. A shot rang out, I guess from the lieutenant’s raised rifle, but the pulsating lights were so disorientating I couldn’t even work out which day it was. After what seemed an eternity, the constancy of normal sunlight returned. The old man was gone.

"A frantic search of that floor began, but there was not so much as a hair or fibre of clothing belonging to the old man that could be found. Then I remember saying to the lieutenant, ‘Sir, the old man said the building would collapse in twenty minutes. We have no reason to disbelieve him.’ The commanding officer stopped for a second and then clearly realised I had a point. ‘Fall back! Clear the building,’ he shouted.

I wondered how we were all going to get out. There was no way everyone could get back down the lift shaft in time. However, as if placed deliberately for our benefit, signs indicating an emergency exit directed us back to the basement. On the floor below the one we thought had been the lowest, we discovered a covered dock and a motorised barge. We scrambled aboard and were able to pass out into the Thames just in time to see the tower block collapse, one storey on top of another, until there was nothing left. A huge dust cloud caused us to choke and splutter and it was only a good thirty minutes later that we were able to take in the complete destruction of the building we had been standing in so recently.

* * *

And so the patriarch of our people, a good, peaceful and kindly man who had suffered the misfortune to be caught up in violent and difficult times, passed out of history. Whether he survived and lived out his days in anonymity, whether he died when the building collapsed or whether he transformed into a higher state of being, nobody knows.

CHAPTER ONE

Dr Richard Lightfoot stood deep in thought, feeling the smooth texture of the sparkling plastic fabric between his thumb and forefinger. The photoreceptors and transmitters caught the light like thousands of precious diamonds, magnifying the importance of this object, the culmination of nearly seven years’ hard work in cutting-edge physics.

The big breakthrough had come when he’d discovered that pieces of a perfect crystal of silicon retained a ‘light memory’. A photon absorbed by one piece of the crystal would be mysteriously and instantly emitted by another, rendering the space between the pieces invisible to the observer. No one understood or could explain this extraordinary quantum tunnelling effect, but nevertheless it was real and could be observed. In theory therefore, it was possible to create a cloaking device. With his team, this is what he’d set out to do, strenuously avoiding the term ‘invisibility cloak’ for fear of sensationalist reporting in the tabloid press. Instead he referred to his developing invention as a light-diverting device, or LDD for short.

He had been overjoyed when the much smaller prototype had worked for the first time, conferring invisibility on a 20p coin. He remembered with wistful affection the evening after this successful experiment, when he and his colleagues had drunk beer and wine late into the night and talked excitedly of where things might lead them; maybe to patents that would make them wealthy and famous, even a Nobel Prize.

However, the reality of finding money to develop their research had soon put strains on the team. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council had been extremely lukewarm about his invention and refused to put forward any money at all. The Science and Technology Facilities Council had, surprisingly, been a little less sceptical and awarded a small grant to keep the work ticking over for a year. Dr Lightfoot had been on the point of disbanding his group when a mysterious donor had appeared on the scene, not only promising to fund the research, but also prepared to plough millions into commercial development. The overwhelming sense of relief gradually diminished as he discovered who this mysterious donor was; an agent for a cartel of very wealthy American and European business people linked to the Family Unity Party.

Dr Richard Lightfoot regarded himself as an ethical man. He had entered the world of science with a strong sense of mission to improve the lot of humanity; for pursuing the common good above all other considerations. He had not entirely lost this sense of moral purpose even now. He was thus more and more uneasy as he discovered that his benefactors were looking to use his invention as a weapon, to spy on unsuspecting people and to keep them from straying from the accepted norms of behaviour.

Moreover, he had realised some time ago that he was gradually being edged out of his own project. He had been forced to accept two colleagues of equal status and it was clear that as soon as his F.U.P. masters were confident they knew everything that needed to be known, he would be quietly dropped altogether. Dr Lightfoot had therefore been very cagey about what information he shared. He was still the only one who fully understood the workings of the LDD; no one could reproduce one without his personal expertise. But this was probably the last time he would be able to say that. If he was to stop this nightmarish project, it would be now or never. If he took the device and destroyed his notes, it might be a decade or more before anyone would work out how to make another one. Yet he had a family to support, a wife and two little girls. If he just disappeared, what would become of them?

He was startled by his two senior colleagues returning from a conference with the benefactors’ agent – he had pointedly not been invited. For some reason that was entirely subconscious, he threw the LDD over himself and crouched down on the floor. There was a switch on the inside of the hem that activated it. It ran either on the mains supply or on four AA batteries, which Dr Lightfoot had fortunately replaced just that morning. It was a risky thing to do, because the LDD had not been tested on anything other than inanimate objects previously, but he turned the switch on just as his colleagues entered the lab.

He gave a sharp intake of breath. The fabric which had been translucent with lines and glittering specks all over it suddenly became utterly transparent. In fact he was able to see the world so clearly that he was sure he must be equally visible and must appear a complete fool crouching on the floor by one of the benches.

However, it was soon obvious that he could not be seen when his two colleagues moved to the centre of the lab.

Richard?

He’s not here, Gary. Why is he always so difficult to find when we need to get some information out of him?

Well, we won’t need to put up with him for much longer. We just need to get Lightfoot to tell us the critical crystal parameters and the positional matrix equivalences then we can dispose of his services altogether. We’ll be able to make an invisibility cloak for ourselves.

Gary moved to the bench where Dr Lightfoot was crouching. Invisibility or not, there was going to be a collision as Gary tried to walk through the space that Dr Lightfoot was occupying. Petrified, Richard Lightfoot was able to do nothing but remain transfixed to the spot awaiting the inevitable. But at the last moment the shape of his colleague dissolved into a blob and reappeared behind him. He felt nothing, not even the wisp of a breeze, as his colleague effectively walked right through him.

He’s left his stuff here, Gary said, apparently blissfully unaware of his bizarre interaction with the invisible Dr Lightfoot. He can’t have gone far. I’ve got a lecture to give in fifteen minutes, so we’ll come back and catch him later. As long as we get him to sign the documents by the end of the day, we’ll be well on target for securing the intellectual property rights for ourselves. The F.U.P. can then do whatever they want with the cloak.

They went out in animated conversation, happily thinking of the success they were about to enjoy. As their voices died away down the corridor, a human being mysteriously reappeared in the Quantum Optoelectronics Lab. Richard Lightfoot carefully examined his limbs and made sure he could make contact with the benches and stools around him. He then looked at himself in a mirror for over a minute, just to convince himself he really was there.

Now that was unexpected, he said to himself. The LDD had not only made him invisible, but also immaterial to those in the world outside. It was as if he had temporarily left the Universe altogether. He vaguely remembered a lecture given by Professor James Grimwold, when he was only just on the right side of sanity, about fiery photons caused by quantum tunnelling effects and the possibility of this leading to gaps in the fabric of time and space.

It looks as if you were right, James, he murmured to himself again, and I am certain I’m the only one to know about it!

He then thought about his treacherous colleagues and the way they had meant to double-cross him all the time. How glad he now was that he had not shared key facts with these people! He knew he had to act immediately; there was no time for further prevarication. He hurriedly stuffed the LDD into a rucksack along with its smaller prototype cousin which was lying on the bench by the door. He then went to the filing cabinet and removed the tell-tale notes that he’d made and stored over the past six months, stuffing them into his briefcase. Finally, he deleted key files on the computer network of the department and packed away his own laptop computer, now the only source of this data.

With rucksack over his shoulder, laptop in his left hand and briefcase in his right, he cautiously emerged into the corridor. No sooner had he made five steps towards the stairs than he heard familiar voices coming from below. He was going to be caught in a compromising position and he didn’t know what to do.

Quick, in here! croaked another familiar voice.

He had no other option but to comply with the request, and he found himself in a dark prep room staring into the mad face of the much-diminished James Grimwold.

I know what you are going to do, Grimwold crowed triumphantly.

Do you? That’s more than I know.

You are doing the right thing. The LDD must not fall into the hands of the Family Unity Party. A great darkness will fall on us all if it does.

But where am I to take it and who am I to trust? What about my family?

Worcester, Grimwold said rather unexpectedly. An old girlfriend lives there, I believe. There is only one person you can trust with the cloak. His name is Darryn Harcourt-Smith. Do as he asks and your family will be safe.

Richard Lightfoot raised an eyebrow. Although boldly stated, this was some of the craziest advice he’d ever been given. The