They slipped inside the main building just as gunfire and the high-pitched whine of directed energy beams jumped in volume, signifying that the attacking force had breached the hangar.
“My uncle,” Sam turned in a panic, but an invisible hand forced her back.
{He has plenty of people covering him,} Gabe assured her. {Don’t forget, the people attacking have no idea the An-Yang delegation is here with us. They’re a force to be reckoned with and will come as a complete surprise. The enemy won’t be able to get past them.}
“They’d better not—” Sam stopped abruptly as the sound of directed energy fire reached them from up ahead.
Micah turned to Isobel. “We need a route, fast.”
The woman spun in a circle, indecision painting her face.
Impatiently, Micah pointed to an intersection up ahead. “Where’s that hallway lead?”
“It dead-ends at the testing pool.”
{Testing pool? Is there an exit there?}
She nodded, and then shook her head.
Micah decided to let her explain along the way, and started forward as she talked.
“The pool’s enormous, big enough to handle most ships that we design. We use it to run certain tests while the vessel’s immersed.”
“What’s it filled with?” Sam asked, her breath coming in short gasps as she ran to keep up with Micah.
Isobel tried to shrug as she ran. “Right now, it’s filled with water and some sort of colloid nanomixture. We’ll never make it around before they catch up to us. It’s a wide open space; we’d be sitting ducks—”
{What’s on the other side?} interrupted Gabe.
“A service door that leads to the maintenance center for the pool. There is an exit beyond that, but there’s no way—”
“Wait,” Sam interrupted. “You said colloid mixture.”
Isobel nodded.
“Any way you can get me patched into that maintenance system so I can take a peek at what’s in that compound?”
Isobel nodded again, and a look of concentration crossed Sam’s face as she accessed the data.
Suddenly, her face broke into a smile, and she took off running, shoving the stasis pod ahead of her.
“Wait, what the hell?” Micah called out, following her down the corridor and into the passage that led to the pool.
Gabe matched his pace, and when they caught up to her, asked, {I take it you have a plan?}
Sam shot them a mysterious smile as they rushed down the hallway toward the double doors at the end.
The sound of battle was increasing in volume, and Micah knew they were running out of time. He palmed the door open when they reached it, and drew in a ragged breath as they opened and revealed the size of the pool.
Isobel was right; there was no way they’d make it to the other side before the enemy caught up with them. They’d be picked off one by one, with Gabe their sole defense.
“This won’t work,” Micah objected. “We’ll never be able to get around this.”
“That’s good, because we’re not going around.”
Sam laughed at the shocked expression that must’ve played on his face.
“We can’t swim it,” he protested. “Not with Pascal along.”
Inside his head, the big cat made a chuffing sound of agreement.
{Water disgusting. That’s what tongues are for.}
Ordinarily the panther-like animal’s comments would’ve elicited a laugh, but Micah was a bit too busy freaking out over their situation. Sam legitimately appeared to consider crossing the pool a viable alternative.
“We won’t be swimming,” she assured them. “But I do need you all to trust me. Back up a few steps, because you need to be running at full speed when you hit the surface of that water.”
Micah shook his head, unable to fully process what she was telling him to do. “You expect us to… walk on water? Are you nuts?”
“It’s not nuts. It’s science.” Sam shot him a grin. “Trust me, flyboy. You’re in my wheelhouse now. And don’t stop when you reach the other side, either. Aim for the door, and I’ll trigger it open for you from the control booth. Just keep going.”
“Just keep swimming,” Isobel said in an odd tone.
Micah shot her a glance but didn’t ask what about the phrase amused the pilot.
{Well, whatever you’re going to do, we’d better do it now. I estimate they’ll be on us in less than two minutes.}
Sam nodded, backing up. “Remember, don’t stop, whatever happens.”
Every instinct Micah had told him to stop her. Instead, he backed up alongside her, and when she raced for the water, he sprinted beside her.
The physicist didn’t break stride, she just kept going… right over the surface of the water. Then he was there, too, his feet pounding on what he could swear was a hard surface, and yet the view of the pool in front of him belied the sensation.
Holy hell! I’m frickin’ walking on water!
The mental disconnect was nearly more than he could handle, and he felt the stirrings of Jonathan’s mind inside his head, but shoved them away, needing every bit of his brain to concentrate on propelling himself forward.
{Not natural,} Pascal grumbled, eliciting a choked laugh from Gabe, whose invisible form kept pace with Sam on the other side.
{Says the cat who can talk.}
“Just think of it as an illusion. Something that’s not really there. But whatever you do, Pascal, don’t stop,” Sam repeated. “Do you understand me?”
The cat paced left and right along the side of the pool, initially unwilling to commit himself to such an act, his feline hindbrain refusing to allow him to get wet. It was finally overcome by the evidence before him, of three humans pushing a stasis pod across the surface of the testing pool.
Finally, Pascal launched himself forward, yelping once when his feet touched the surface of the water, only to find that it did indeed push back at him, though not as firmly, since the cat hadn’t built up the speed the humans had.
Micah nearly laughed when he glanced back at the large feline trying to high-step his way across the pool.
{You’re going to have to explain this to us when we get out of here.} Gabe sounded fascinated by the entire experience.
“How about I explain it to you once we get into that transport and we’re safely out of here without bullets flying overhead,” she retorted.
{Deal.}
As promised, Sam keyed the door open just as they reached the other side. They rushed through into the control room, Micah turning when he heard a second yelp from Pascal.
The cat had slowed too much and had begun to sink.
Micah and Gabe leapt for the pool’s edge, dragging the now-wet feline from the water.
{You said wouldn’t get wet,} Pascal growled.
“I said not to slow down, too,” Sam scolded, glancing around.
Micah followed her line of sight to a pile of towels on a nearby shelf.
“Hurry, grab a towel to cover our trail,” she urged.
They mopped up the evidence of Pascal’s dunking, their movements hurried as the sound of gunfire increased in volume, signifying that the fight had spilled into the dead-end corridor that led to the pool.
“Where’s our transport?” asked Micah as they retreated into the control room and Sam triggered the door closed, shutting them inside. “And where’s the exit from here?”
Isobel pointed to an emergency exit door beside a shelving unit of supplies.
{Transport’s pulling up now.} Gabe stepped up to one of the consoles in the control room. {Isobel, can you bring up a diagram of this facility?}
Nodding, the pilot stepped up, and in seconds, had it displayed.
{Show me where we are. I need to tell the transport where to land.}
* * *
Sam didn’t take an easy breath until after the shuttle had lifted off and she could see the twin pair of Novastrike ships escorting their vessel back to the base.
Iso
bel had opted to stay behind when a pair of Unit soldiers showed up beside the doors as backup for their departure.
“I believe you owe us an explanation for what happened back there, doc,” Gabe prompted, unsealing his drakeskin and pulling his hood back. “You said it was science. What kind of science, exactly?”
“Have you ever heard of oobleck?”
“Nope, but I’d be willing to lay odds it means something like ‘liquid that hardens on impact,’” Micah quipped from where he sat beside her, one arm thrown casually behind the back of the transport’s bench seat.
She sank back into its cushions, willing her heart to slow as she thought about how to word her explanation. “That pool was filled with a mixture of water and a non-newtonian substance.”
“Non…?” Gabe quirked a brow at her.
“The substance is a colloid held in a nanoparticle shell. When activated, it turns the water in that pool into a material with shear-thickening properties.”
“In simple, non-science-y words, that means…?”
“ ‘Liquid that hardens on impact.’”
{Not hard. I sank. Got wet. Cost you three steaks.}
CHECK
Various simultaneous locations
Ceriba and Eridu
At the Alpha Centauri heliopause, a Calabi-Yau gate flared. Its extra-dimensional energies danced in a coruscating display against a glittering backdrop of stars, heralding the arrival of wave after wave of battle groups, each led by a capital ship.
With military precision, the formation disappeared one by one, as suddenly as they had arrived—each individual ship enveloped in its own brilliant blue Casimir bubble.
Though close study would show their configurations to match those of the Geminate Navy, all ships broadcast Akkadian idents.
Signals Intelligence would also later confirm that, at the exact same moment, an An-Yang strike unit jumped from their orbit around Proxima’s star into Scharnhost space. Curiously, they, too, transmitted Akkadian transponder codes.
Simultaneously, several highly trained tactical groups converged on their targets: both on Ceriba and on Eridu.
The Ceriba teams had two destinations. The first silently infiltrated the ICU ward at St. Clair Township’s Memorial Hospital. A second arrived at the preschool where the prime minister’s twin daughters attended.
The teams on Eridu dispersed, each to deliver a data chip to a high-ranking minister, detailing the extent of Project Obelus—and identifying Asher Dent as its author.
* * *
Thad waited as Jonathan reached out to Micah.
After a second, the pilot sent Thad a mental nod. {A Navy battle group just jumped through the gate. A small force from An-Yang jumped to Scharnhorst space at the same time. They’ve coordinated their arrivals.}
{What’s our window to get this done?}
{They should be popping out half a million klicks from Eridu in an hour. Shadow Recon ships are already here. They’re lurking overhead, ready to put on a show. Cutter says we’re cleared to proceed.}
Thad’s attention returned to Che. “We’re green.” One side of the Marine’s mouth kicked up in an ironic half smile. “You’re about to have two pretty big military ship formations appear right in front of your home fleet.”
An answering twinkle appeared in Che’s eyes. “I trust they’re friendlies?”
“Not to Asher Dent they aren’t,” Ell murmured.
Che turned and gave her a predatory smile. “Excellent. Neither are we.”
* * *
Asher Dent had just closed the latest report from Clint Janus when Citizen General Warren Hatami, Akkadia’s minister of defense, sent him a priority ping.
{Sensors from our advanced listening platforms have detected two large footprints at the Geminate gate. They’ve since disappeared.}
Dent had expected a response such as this from the Alliance Navy. It wouldn’t do them any good.
{I’ll take care of this personally.}
He cut the connection and then reached out to his secretary, ordering the man to get the Shar-Kali prison warden on a secured channel.
If Garza couldn’t persuade the puppet functioning as his stand-in, Asher would have Janus turn the persuasion up a notch.
He stood and began to pace when the seconds turned into minutes and still the man had not connected them. His assistant was usually so efficient; it was highly irregular for Dent to be left waiting while his request was fulfilled.
He resisted the urge to prod the man, though he knew in his gut something had gone wrong.
As the minutes stretched out, his suspicion crystallized into certainty, so bypassing protocol, Dent reached out to Shar-Kali himself—only to have the connection rebuffed.
CHECKMATE
Premier’s Briefing, State Assembly House
Central Prefecture, Eridu
It had been half an hour, and still Asher Dent could not reach the Shar-Kali prison facility. He knew it was quite possible that Rin Zhou had managed to take it. That outcome had been low on his list of probabilities, and yet he had a contingency plan in place for just such a thing.
He reached out to his minister of defense, and when Hatami’s image appeared on his holo, Asher’s agitation was such that he didn’t notice the other man’s cool greeting.
“I need you to send a platoon of Junxun to Shar-Kali immediately. There is an uprising. Rin Zhou Enlai is to be dispatched with extreme prejudice.”
“Is she, Premier Dent?”
The man’s odd tone finally registered.
Asher frowned. Voice sharp, he demanded, “Are you questioning my orders?”
“What of the ships that transitioned through the gate?” the other man asked.
Asher reared his head back, nonplussed by the sudden topic change. “Ships transition through the gate continuously. What is unusual about these?”
“The energy footprint recorded by our listening platforms suggests the ships are military,” Hatami said, his tone sounding detached, almost bored. “The EM waveform matches the Geminate Alliance Navy.”
“When did this happen?”
The man looked up and to the right, apparently accessing the information via his wire. “Ah, that would be… about an hour ago.”
Asher could barely contain his rage. “Why am I just now hearing of this?”
“Other things that came up that took priority.” He shrugged. “Besides, there was some confusion between the advanced signature analysis and the IFF they were broadcasting.”
Again with the odd tenor in the man’s voice.
The urge to rip the defense minister a new one nearly overpowered the sudden unease Asher felt at the mention of the odd IFF signal.
Silently vowing to address the man’s insolence at a later date—Hatami has just been ushered to the top of the Project Obelus line—Asher opted for information over respect. “What about an IFF ident could possibly be confusing?”
The man looked him dead in the eye. “They’re using Akkadian transponder codes. The kind that Home Fleet won’t question.”
Disquiet filled Dent, and he signed off, hardly noticing that the man on the other end had been less than obsequious.
Ten minutes later, Asher’s office door slid open—an action that temporarily stunned him into silence.
No one had ever had the audacity to enter without receiving permission first. The breach of protocol was unheard of in the Akkadian Empire.
Every one of the Imperial cabinet members filed in, the expressions on their faces ranging from suspicion to rage to the cold mask of death.
Dent pushed his chair away from his desk and stood. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.
The ministers fanned out.
“Oh, I think you know what this is.” Warren Hatami’s voice was harsh.
“We don’t have time for this nonsense,” Asher snarled. “There is an uprising going on within the Shar-Kali prison. There is a fleet above our skies that somehow managed to obtain clearanc
e codes which allowed them past our screening forces. I will have your head for this!”
Arms crossed, Warren Hatami shot Asher a sardonic look. “An interesting development, wouldn’t you say?” He examined his fingernails, adding in an offhand manner, “Their EM signature’s quite interesting, too.”
Asher narrowed his eyes. “What signature?”
“I believe I can answer that,” a new voice stated from the entrance.
Rin Zhou Enlai stepped through, flanked on one side by Che Josza, the other by a Junxun assassin. It was the woman known as the Dagger, Che Josza’s infamous shadow.
To his utter shock, behind them entered three people he’d never expected to see. Two weren’t Akkadians at all; they were from the Geminate Alliance.
“So, you’re in bed with the Alliance now? Traitors to the empire?”
“Interesting that you would use that word,” the minister of the exchequer mused. “Let’s discuss that term, shall we?”
“Yes, who is the real traitor here?” the minister of defense added.
Asher saw the assassin send a hand signal to someone out in the hall. A slumped body appeared in the doorway, supported between two Junxun warriors.
They dragged Clint Janus’s body toward him, and unceremoniously dumped the dead man at Asher’s feet.
“Whatever he told you,” he began, but a sharp gesture from Rin Zhou cut him off.
“You would enslave your own people? That is not what the leader of the Akkadians does to his own,” she growled.
“And you would be the better choice?” Asher scoffed and pointed skyward. “The leader of the Akkadian Empire wouldn’t willingly invite outsiders into our own skies. You would give Akkadian transponder codes to our enemies!”
“Oh, it’s not just the Alliance above us.” Che Josza sounded bored, his stance casual and nonchalant, but his eyes blazed with anger. “The Shang Dynasty of An-Yang is represented as well. And the Coalition of Worlds would have sent their own representatives, but they couldn’t scramble the ships fast enough.
Chiral Justice: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (The Biogenesis War Book 3) Page 33
