by Hodden, TE
Eloise was in a medical gown, writhing and flexing her body against her restraints. She snarled and grunted, as she struggled, her eyes were closed.
President Croft looked up at Catherine, or at least at her spear. “The Scarlet Knight.”
Catherine bowed her head. “Mister President.” She stepped forwards and held out the Spear, reaching into it with her thoughts, to scan Eloise.
President Croft squeezed his daughter’s hand. “I met the Scarlet Knight once before. The…previous one.”
Catherine winced. She could sense the word that he had almost said. The real Scarlet Knight. She had carried the Spear and worn the Scarlet for five years, since her brother’s death, but he had been the Scarlet Knight for fourteen years, and as far as many were concerned, he was the Scarlet Knight. When they talked about her grandmother, or her father, they specified. ‘Oh, hey, do you remember the first Scarlet Knight,’ or ‘the one with the helmet’.
They never had to do that for Morgan.
Catherine smiled, and nodded. “My brother.”
“He was a good man,” President Croft said.
Catherine nodded, and concentrated on the spear, as it scanned Eloise, studying every nerve, every vein, every organ, every gland, every microbe in her gut, and every gene in every cell.
The Spear quivered in warning as it sensed the mass that did not belong, not only alien to the body, but alien to this world. A parasite. A mass of microscopic threads, spreading out, like the roots of a tree, through her brain.
“What is that?” Catherine whispered. She drew back the spear. “Excuse me.”
President Croft gripped her wrist. “You found something?”
Catherine drew her hand back. “Perhaps. I need to speak to her doctor. I have some friends at Paradox Technologies. I hope they can lend us some equipment.”
Croft’s gaze hardened. “You did find something?”
Catherine kept her voice even. “I detected signs of a parasite. However, my being able to sense it, and her doctors being able to accurately understand it, are different issues. With the right equipment we can see if I am right, and work out how to treat this… thing.”
Allistaire rose to his feet. “What kind of a parasite?”
The First Lady gave Catherine a pleading look. “A parasite like a worm? An animal? A… a…”
“A mould?” President Croft whispered. He gripped her wrist. “Is it a mould?”
Catherine sighed. “I don’t know. We will find out. Please. Excuse me.”
The President shoved his way past her. “Damn it. God damn it!”
He burst in the hallway and ran for the stairs.
“No!” Allistaire raised a finger at the Secret Service Agents. “No! I will get him. Don’t worry.” He looked at Catherine. “Make your calls.”
00100
Outside the wind was still howling, and the snow was still lost in the whiteout.
Summers stepped into her poky little room, in the poky little cabin, and rolled the door closed behind her. She slumped into the chair by her desk, and powered up her computer. The computer lurched slowly to life, with the drone of fans, and the noisy chattering of the hard drive.
Her desk, and monitor were decorated in floppy discs, held in place by double sided tape, each of them colourfully labelled in felt tipped pens, with a brief description and a cartoon of stick figures, suggesting the happy memory stored on the disc. “Bob cooking at Christmas”, or “Thanksgiving Karaoke”, or just “Girls Being Beautiful”, and many more.
Summers put a finger to one of the discs, an idea almost taking form, then dissolving out of sight.
She set to work, loading that day’s haul of floppy discs, and copying the photographs of her finds. One at a time, saved onto the server, for the nightly satellite upload.
There had been some kind of a hiccup with equipping the expedition, and instead of the state of the art, toughened, cameras the rest of the team had been issued, Summers had been given a camera that Warner had to dig out the back of a cupboard. It was a few years old, and saved the pictures straight to floppy disc, rather than a memory chip, which meant lugging fresh discs with her out to the dig, and made uploading the photos a chore.
She paused at the image of one of the burned-out crystal needles.
Again, an idea… or a question… almost formed at the back of her mind.
Another few photographs saved, she loaded the next disc, and repeated the process.
Then the next.
Then the next.
Then she was on the last disc, copying across the picture of the pristine needle. The only needle that wasn’t broken, or burned out. She took out the disc, and sketched a needle on the label, and drew a pattern in felt tip, so it stood out.
With a hint of a smile, she reached under her desk and added the disks to her plastic box, before grabbing a fresh pack for tomorrow.
She hesitated, and looked at the box of discs, stacked in neat order. “Why haven’t we seen any devices to play them with? Why aren’t we finding them with the device?”
The wind groaned.
Summers rose to her feet, and ran to Professor Warner’s room. She hammered on the door.
He opened his door and released a cloud of pipe smoke into the corridor. “Brandi?”
“Why,” she said, excitedly, “don’t we find the needles with the machine that plays them?”
Warner stepped back into his room, and gestured for her to take the seat as his desk. He dropped onto the bed, and groped to pause the tape of the old comedy show he was listening to. “Well, I suspect it is about the way the ice moves in the glacier. The needles are light, they could be swept up easily, like litter in a flood…”
“Perhaps,” Summers admitted. “But we are finding them in ruins, in boxes, and they seem to be in situ.” She pointed at the shelf of awful British comedy tapes above his stereo. “Your tapes are kept with your stereo. My discs are on my computer desk. The DVDs are kept out by the TV. Don’t you see?”
He shrugged. “Then you think something happened to the machines that read the needles?”
Summers shook her head. “Okay. Another question. Why are they all burned out?”
Warner sighed. “I guess… They were left on too long and cooked…” He trailed off. “Oh. I see your point.”
Summers smiled. “Can we go take a look?”
00101
Barney stomped through the alien ship, his footsteps echoing around him, through the labyrinth of rusty, vaulted corridors with oddly slanting walls. The Osprey suit had a fix on the strange broadcast, in what seemed to be the bridge.
Matthew and the Dweeb followed behind him.
“So… Sir?” The Dweeb asked.
“Matthew,” The Praetorian said, with a smile. “We’re all friends here, Charlie.”
The Dweeb gestured around them. “You have…travelled on a ship like this?”
“Not exactly like this, but… yeah.” Matthew grinned. “I was sixteen the first time I scooped up into space. An alien slave trader wanted to sell me. I spent my gap year with the princess of a paradise moon. I helped save her city from invasion.”
Barney chuckled. “Was that the green swimsuit model, or the kitten woman?”
Matthew flushed. “Whatever he told you, it wasn’t like that.”
“Hey…” Barney held up his hands. “I don’t judge. I mean, the alien chicks seem to dig the whole humble nobility act…”
The Dweeb raised his voice. “You just made it sound like this ship came a long way.”
“A very long way,” Matthew agreed. “From the farthest side of the most distant spiral arm.”
“Yeah,” Barney agreed. “So… is anybody else feeling really bad about this?”
The corridor ended at a pair of heavy doors. The suit’s sensors were ticking away excitedly.
Barney tapped the control panel, but the doors did not shift. He tried again, but there was still no response. He lowered his voice and whispered to the s
uit. “Mute the sensors, and… help me out?”
The suit’s gauntlet morphed, forming a sonic cutter about his hand.
“Hey,” Matthew said, easing Barney aside. “Let’s not be so drastic, shall we?”
A tendril of Matthew’s aura reached out, and slithered into the gap between the doors and prised them apart.
The bridge was in disarray. Dead bodies of creatures as much like jellyfish as they were like humans drifted in zero gravity. Debris filled the air. Half the control panels were broken, their surfaces blown out by explosions. There was wreckage and charring.
A few of the panels were still active, their holographic images flickering in and out focus, dissolving into static.
In the middle of the room, facing the view ports, was a long, transparent staff, with a hooked end like a shepherd’s crook, standing, apparently impossibly, on its tip.
Barney held his hand out towards the crook, and the suit’s sensors went wild. “That is the source of our transmissions.”
Matthew nodded, and strolled over to one of the consoles. He made some adjustments to the controls, and the holographic display flickered. The image resolved to complex display of navigational data. Matthew frowned in concentration. “Eleven weeks.”
Barney glanced at him. “What?”
“This all happened eleven weeks ago,” Matthew reported. “They didn’t mean to end up here. They were on a long journey, with lots of jumps, and they were struggling because they had lost one of their engines in combat. The rest gave out in mid-jump, and they fell short. Here. Whoever survived the crash must have set the beacon. Whatever it is.”
Barney wrinkled his nose. “The readings are all over the place. Like… what we are picking up is just an echo, distorting all the real frequencies like…”
The Dweeb perked up. “Like ripples on a pond?” He paced around the staff. “Can you check for signs of life in the ship? If somebody is maintaining a breathable atmosphere, or… something? I think this could be magic. But it would require somebody to keep it alive.”
Barney checked the suit sensors. “I’m not getting any life signs.”
Matthew tapped at the console. “Huh. There is… an active cryogenic chamber. Charlie, what do you think the signal is?”
“It’s an old magician’s trick,” The Dweeb said. “It disrupts other communications in a pulse, to draw your attention to a half-spell. Like… when your mobile phone is about to ring, and you hear the distortion on your stereo? It lets you know the message is there, but it won’t play unless you complete the half-spell.” He crouched and touched the floor. Frost spread out from his fingertips, tracing a complex pattern over the floor, that spiralled out from the staff, and then spread up into the air, folding and reflecting on countless planes, like a snowflake. “A half-spell.”
Matthew raised an eyebrow. “Can you decode it?”
The Dweeb made a gesture. The snowflake folded in on itself, then blossomed out again.
A figure shimmered into being, insubstantial as a hologram. A young woman, barely more than a girl, wearing many layers of robes, each as thin as spider webs, that covered all signs of her flesh. Her voice was soft and breathy. “To whoever from Tallis comes in search of us, please heed this warning. Atlantis, and all her territories are… gone. Raised to ashes and cinders. We barely escaped… No… we did not escape. They destroyed our engine, and it failed before we made it to safety. Do not come in search of me. Do not try to rescue me. Turn away, run home… warn Tallis to evacuate. They… he… is coming. The Legion is coming.”
The message looped.
The Dweeb looked helpless. “Tallis is a place?”
Barney nodded. “Pretty much a Galactic Super Power. It’s a Dyson Sphere, that contains a whole solar system, and is… well… pretty much one huge city with districts spread over moons and planets and…It’s where she was running to.”
Matthew looked worried. “Where she was trying to send a message to.”
Barney cleared his throat. “So… the message stays up as long as she lives, right?”
Matthew smiled. “If we save her, we can find a way to help her send that message. Preferably in person.” He tapped the Dweeb on the shoulder, with a tendril of his aura. “Come on. The cryo-chamber will be this way.”
Barney followed the others, watching his sensors. “Okay. So… did she just say that the Atlantis territories were all gone? What does that? And… is it coming this way?”
00110
Summers sat at the workbench in the laboratory module, studying the complex circuits of the crystal needle with a camera probe, magnifying the fine threads of circuits on the large screen. Hans and Professor Warner stood by the monitor, watching in fascination.
Warner chewed on his pipe. “I don’t see anything that looks like a power source. Or… components I would recognise. Perhaps our mistake is assuming these are electronic circuits to begin with.”
Hans scratched at his ear with a pen. “There must have been a stored charge, somewhere for them to burn out. Unless…Did you ever build a crystal set? As a kid? You make a little radio, and it doesn’t have a battery because the radio waves hitting the antenna are enough to power it.”
Summers nodded. “That would make sense. The needles were under the ice, but every now and again something would trigger them, and they would start to fire up, and burn out.”
Warner tapped the screen with his pipe. “So… Whatever powers these devices, continued to tick over, even after the city was… buried under the glacier? Perhaps it’s still ticking over.”
Summers focussed the probe on the metal tip of the needle. “I don’t think this is a contact. I think maybe this is…how we turn it on?”
Hans shrugged. “What makes you think that?”
Summers laughed. “I don’t know. It just… makes sense.” She took off her glove, and pinched the metal tip between her thumb and finger. “See?”
The needle glowed.
The lights in the laboratory dimmed and flickered. The screen distorted.
A column of light shimmered next to the workbench. Within was a figure, too tall, too thin, too elongated and lithe to be human, with scaled flesh and a bone plates on their forehead, dressed in a toga. Around the figure swirled messages in an alphabet of strange, squid-like letters.
The image flickered to another of the figures, of the same species, but with horns instead of the bone plate. He was waving his hand, and making an impassioned speech, full of fury.
The image flickered again. A younger woman of the species, clutched at her heart, and whispered a tear soaked message.
Summers let go of the crystal and the spectral image faded.
Hans shivered. “Perhaps we did see ghosts. If some of the needles activate before we find them…”
Professor Warner nodded. “Yes… yes… that would make sense. I wonder… I wonder if it has been reaching out to us… if it wants to be found…”
The crystal sparked and glowed.
“Brandi?” Hans demanded.
“I’m… not doing that,” Summers snapped, hopping back from the workbench.
Another image swirled into being. This time of a more human looking figure, a petite woman in many layers of veils and robes. She spoke in a pleading, terrified, voice. “To whoever from Tallis comes in search of us, please heed this warning.”
Warner gasped. “Is that English?”
The hologram continued. “Atlantis, and all her territories are… gone. Raised to ashes and cinders. We barely escaped… No… we did not escape. They destroyed our engine, and it failed before we made it to safety. Do not come in search of me. Do not try to rescue me. Turn away, run home… warn Tallis to evacuate. They… he… is coming. The Legion is coming.”
Summers rubbed her head. “What was that? Was that on the needle.”
“No.” Warner gazed into the distance. “No… I think that was sent from somewhere. He is coming…” Warner smiled. “Yes. He is coming. Interesting.” He crossed to
the window, and stared out into the blizzard that filled the night. “Something is here. Something and it wants me to find it. Can’t you feel it? In the air? In this place… all around us. It’s watching us. Waiting. Wanting to be revealed!”
00111
The team from Paradox Technologies assembled the scanner in a surgical theatre. It was one of the only rooms with enough space for the scanner, which was tall, rather than bulky. Erected at one end of the surgical bed, it gave Catherine the impression of a guillotine.
When the device was finally ready, Catherine and Scimitar joined President Croft, Grace, and Allistaire in the viewing gallery above the doctors. The President held his wife close, as they watched, unable to look away. The Secretary of State paced back and forth in the corner.
Grace stared at the restless Secretary. “Luther, shouldn’t you be back in Washington?”
Allistaire answered her with a serpentine smile. “My place is here, for you.”
“Really?” Grace snorted. “Are there press outside?”
The doctors placed Eloise under the scanner array. Emerald lasers swept back and forth, up and down her freshly shaven head, over and over again. The holographic display was projected from a column like device next to the bed. The image stuttered into being, drawn in distinct slices. It was a vastly magnified model of Eloise’s brain, showing the structure in incredible detail.
The parasite roots were highlighted by the scanner.
Scimitar sat forwards. “You were right.”
Catherine nodded. “Now we just have to work out what it is, and how to treat it.”
In the corner of her eye, Catherine caught the President giving Allistaire a nod. The Secretary took his briefcase, and walked briskly away.
One of the doctors stared up at the windows. “Mister President, we have confirmed a… foreign object in your daughter’s brain. We are going to ensure she is stable, and won’t feel a thing, then we are going to take a biopsy. We want to try and establish what it is, so we can know how to fight it.”
