“What about the camera’s inside the warehouse?”
“Hank can turn those off as we enter from section to section. You’ll only have a minute or two to peruse in each area, but that’s all I can give you.”
“How are you going to convince Hank to do all of that?”
“Give me a few hits and I’ll give Hank the rest. If you want in that badly, I can give you like a ten-minute looky-loo if you do this for us. A win-win. You feel me?”
Drew would have to extend that ten minutes, but right now, that little time was better than nothing. He nodded, giving Javon the joint and a lighter.
Javon took three long puffs, then looked at Drew with relaxed eyes. “I’ll be back. Stay here.”
Drew hoped he wasn’t being set up. For a second, he wanted to make his way back to his car and drive off, calling it a day. Any blemish on his record would be something Hobbs could use to discredit him. Mix your fiction with a smattering of facts and you could make a plausible case for someone being a—what had Hobbs called him?—a porno-loving junkie? If he was going to present this Callisto story and his findings to the world, he needed his record to be squeaky clean. He stared off at the sky, the fumes of the hot day waving like transparent silk, telling him that being in the heat of a risk was part of a journalist’s life. Or, he was nuts and the temperature was getting to him.
Javon walked around the corner, motioning Drew over. “We’ve got one minute to get into the warehouse.”
He led Drew to the main entrance and pressed in a security code. A click and a buzz and the door opened. Drew’s eyes adjusted from the bright sunlight to the low light. He was in a preparation room that was closed off from the rest of the warehouse. People readied themselves with safety clothes and equipment before they entered the main portion of the warehouse.
Javon handed him a construction helmet from a rack attached to the wall. “Put this on.”
Drew placed the helmet on, watching Javon do the same. Over in the corner of the room were several large cardboard dumpster bins with pallets loaded in rows next to them. Lockers were lined up on the opposite wall and warehouse suits hung from metal rods.
Javon opened a large garage door, closing it behind Drew.
Forklifts, pallet jacks, and scores of men and women in warehouse suits busied themselves by unloading pallets full of heavy boxes and setting them on large metal shelves.
“Come this way,” said Javon, walking down a concrete path bordered by stanchions that held ropes.
“What’s in those boxes?” Drew yelled over the beeping forklifts and loud jacks.
Javon looked over his shoulder as he kept a good pace, zig zagging through the walkway maze. “Materials for our propulsion engines and other space-age shit.”
Drew wanted to punch the air in triumph. He was in the right place. He kept his arms at his sides and trotted behind his guide like a good little boy.
There was a large column in the middle of the warehouse. The elevator shaft. Two men stood on either side of it. Alert, eyes front, no smiles. Military. “After we tour the warehouse are we going in that elevator?”
“No.”
“Where does it go?”
“To another section below. I’ve never been down there.”
“Why not?”
“You see those two guys?”
Drew nodded as Javon continued, “They have side arms.” Javon observed Drew’s confused face. “You know, guns. Only top military officials and those with high security clearances get past them. The section below us is run by the GSA, not by TEC. I have no access.”
Drew lowered his head, disappointed. “That’s where the colonel said we’d be going. I guess he was going to get me security clearance for my story. I probably can’t get access to that right now, can I?”
Javon pointed toward the floor. “Down there?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Okay, well, another thing is that I’m supposed to watch and observe. He was going to allow me to walk around on my own. I’ll stay on the path.” It was all bullshit, but maybe it’d work. He held his breath.
Javon looked at his watch. “I’m sorry. I don’t—”
Drew dropped his shoulders, huffed, made sure Javon knew he was annoyed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m just going to leave and come back when the colonel is here. I can’t do a story unless I do it right.”
“Here, let me get on the line and see if I can pinpoint where the colonel is. If he was supposed to meet you, then he’s got to be around here somewhere.” Javon went to a phone hanging on the wall and dialed three numbers. “Charles, Javon here. I—”
Drew curled his fingers around the door knob. “Javon, don’t worry about it. I’ll take off and come by next week.”
“Hold on. I have—”
Drew shut the door before Javon could finish his sentence and hurried through the stanchion maze, coming up to the garage door and pulling it upward, letting it rise the rest of the way on its own. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Javon walking over to catch up. Drew acted as if he didn’t see him and walked into the preparation room, shutting the garage door, hearing it clatter as it hit the ground. A few more steps and he’d be outside and back at the guard post where he began this tour.
But that wasn’t where he was going.
He took off his helmet, placed it on the rack, and raced over to the largest cardboard dumpster bin, opened it up and jumped inside. He covered himself with as much cardboard as he could, hearing Javon fidgeting with the garage door, then opening it.
“He left already?” said Javon. “What a prick.”
22
June 4th ~ Star Warden – Second Class Star Carrier – Secret Space Program ~ J-Quadrant, Solar System (Callisto Orbit)
Star Warden’s launch bay was a few football fields long and just as wide. As it should be. Star Warden was a second-class Star Carrier, the largest ship in the Secret Space Program. Only three were in existence, Star Haven and Star Bracken, the other two.
The launch bay was full of transport ships, starfighters, and a few frigates in for repair. Crewmembers inspected craft and worked on damaged ships, doing the daily grind like a colony of ants.
Special Agent Cole walked up his dropship’s ramp, glad he wasn’t an ant. No, he was the baddest of the bad. He was a bona fide wasp. No, a scorpion. He could take down any reptilian commando, enemy humanoid, or insectoid trooper in combat without much of a sweat, but sweating was what he loved to do.
The clang of his elastic hybrid titanium boots echoed against the dropship’s interior. He adjusted his helmet noise dial a level lower.
His ship wide and long enough to carry a bus load of people, but people weren’t what his ship was designed for. His ship was for quick extractions. Punch in and punch out.
Reaching the front of the cockpit, he pressed a few buttons on the control panel, pulling up the information that Admiral Gentry Race said he’d provide.
SOLAR SYS LOCATION: E-QUADRANT, EARTH.
LOCATION: ST. GEORGE’S, GRENADA.
EXACT LOCATION: FORT GEORGE, ENTRANCE TO AN UNDERGROUND FACILITY.
TARGET: STARFIGHTER PILOT, DEFECTOR LIEUTENANT KADEN JAXX.
GOAL: EXTRACT KADEN JAXX AND BRING HIM TO STAR WARDEN.
FORCE: EXCEPT WITH KADEN JAXX, DEADLY IF NECESSARY.
Cole placed his gloved hand on a flat display on the control panel. It lit up and Cole tightened as a bolt of electricity went through him. A picture of Jaxx, along with his DNA signature, uploaded to his helmet’s Heads up Display. Once Cole landed on Grenada, his helmet would guide him directly to Jaxx, like a pig snuffling out a truffle.
He cracked his knuckles, then his neck as the ramp closed. He brought his craft to a hover, readying to exit through the launch tube.
He grinned. It had been a long time since he’d been on the most beautiful place in the galaxy—Earth. He hoped he could screw it up a little, along with some humans in the process.
Or, maybe
he could visit his mom.
He shook his head. His lips downturned. “I’d rather feed her to the dogs.”
23
June 4th ~ Plano, Texas
If it hadn’t been for the air conditioning inside the warehouse, Drew would have roasted to death under all the cardboard. As the afternoon turned into evening, the warehouse employees shifted from stacking piles of cardboard boxes in the cardboard bins, to going home for the night. Finally, he heard Javon tap in the alarm code and exit the premises.
There Drew lay, still covered in cardboard, waiting to see if Javon was the last to leave. If a night crew scoured the premises, then they’d most likely find Drew. Eventually.
He pushed the load of cardboard off him and flipped open the dumpster lid. He crawled out and grabbed a hold of the garage door handle and lifted, nearly pulling his shoulder out of socket. The door was locked.
He paced to the alarm. The combination must have automatically locked all doors in the complex. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Please, please tell me that’s not true.” He tapped his temple. “Think, think.”
He caught a glimpse of the chain attached to the garage. It was linked through a metal loop in the concrete and wrapped around the loop. How could he break that?
He smiled. “No need.”
Either the guards were lazy or they didn’t care because neither the lock nor any other type of security apparatus held the chain and loop together. He bent down and unwrapped the chain and pulled it through the loop, then opened the garage door. How could they be that stupid? Did they really leave space-age shit behind one locked door? Not lock the inner door? Well, no. There was still the elevator and who knew if the guards ever went on break. They probably had round-the-clock coverage of the inner sanctum.
Other than the flickering of a few hanging fluorescent lights, the warehouse was silent. He stepped over the stanchion ropes and walked past pallet jacks lined next to each other, all plugged in and charging.
Drew walked the aisles of metal shelves until he found himself in the middle of the warehouse, the column and elevator in clear view. “No freaky-deaky way. No guards.” He pulled out his phone as he walked toward the elevator and snapped a few pictures before pressing the elevator’s down arrow.
The elevator opened.
Inside the elevator two buttons, one labeled TEC and the other labeled GSA, were on the control panel next to the door. He pressed GSA. The doors closed.
After a few minutes, he checked his phone. It had been more than a few minutes, more like five minutes. The elevator didn’t have an emergency function or an open-door function. So, he pressed GSA again, hoping that would take him down faster.
More minutes swept by and he wondered if maybe the elevator hadn’t descended at all and he imagined the motion. Maybe the two military men somehow shut off the elevator before they left for the evening.
He pressed the GSA button again.
Nothing.
“Am I trapped?”
He pressed it again.
The doors remained closed.
Perhaps he could escape out of the top of the elevator like in the movies.
He looked at the ceiling and his mouth went dry.
A small camera hung in the corner of the elevator.
And were probably littered throughout the warehouse.
Now it was his turn to wear the dunce’s cap. How could he be so stupid and absentminded? There would be cameras everywhere, probably triggered by movement. His heart palpitated. He just made a grade-A rookie mistake, but he was already in this, chest deep. There was no reason to get out now. The only thing he could hope for was that the cameras weren’t activated by motion. If they were, then somewhere a guard would be alarmed and sent to the warehouse. Hopefully rats skirting around the warehouse had cleared that problem up, causing too many false alarms. He decided to press ahead. If they were coming for him, well they were coming for him. But if they weren’t—if the cameras were simply recording—he would need to be as cautious and careful as possible. If he could ever get out of the elevator.
The elevator dinged and the door opened. His heart skipped a beat. He rushed out and halted. He wasn’t in the warehouse. He twisted around, looking at the elevator, wondering if the elevator simply descended too slow or it ran on space-age casters that were friction-free. If he’d been descending for that long—he checked his watch; it had been at least an eight-minute ride—he was a lot deeper under the warehouse than he had imagined. The elevator was no longer set inside a large column. Instead, it was inside a wall that extended the width of this giant facility, a door without a handle next to it.
He looked around. The lights here were different. Somehow they glowed, giving off more of a moonlight hue than anything else.
Rows of food, luggage, medical equipment, and outdoor supplies, such as shovels, pick axes, and hoes, lined the floor. Behind, were hundreds of dune-buggy-like cars along with a plethora of small aircraft similar to Jetson’s flying cars but with curved wings. The rows of aircraft went on forever.
He took out his phone and took a picture. He was about to investigate the Jetson-like craft, when he spotted the luggage.
Why the luggage? And, why so much luggage? Were thousands of people being evacuated? To where? And when?
He took another picture.
Att the edge of the room, on a side wall, were dozens of garage doors, all double the width of a normal garage, extending hundreds of feet up to meet with the domed ceiling. This place wasn’t just big, it was ginormous. He’d never seen a place so large. This dwarfed a football stadium and he imagined he was only seeing half of it.
He snapped picture after picture.
He walked away from the elevator, and the door next to it opened vertically. Drew jumped back, a sudden coldness hitting his core. His body tingled as he imagined a group of guys emerging with their guns drawn, aiming their weapons at his head. He wanted to move, but his feet pinned to the ground, waiting for the inevitable.
When the inevitable didn’t happen, he relaxed and peeked through the opening His eyes widened and his mouth gaped. “What the...” He needed a hit of weed about now.
Drew stepped through the doorway, seeing another side of the facility as large as the side he was just in. That, however, wasn’t what he was most focused on.
A plane, larger than any he’d ever seen, sat in front of him. He shook his head. This wasn’t a plane. It was too jet-like, twice the size of a 747 and double the height. Bulky and beautiful, like something from the future, aerodynamic, and with a large booster near the tail.
He grabbed his phone, again snapping as many pictures as he could.
He walked around the plane. On the side, in black letters, it read: SPACE SHAQ and JUPITER OR BUST.
Drew raced through everything he’d learned about Slade, GSA, and Callisto. Someone sure as shit planned to leave the planet. But who? And when? And where would they go? Slade. Slade had said, in Rock Magazine, that he was a firm believer in the imminent threat of global warming. Drew’s fingers went numb. He wasn’t an alarmist, but if Slade was getting ready to leave the planet, taking thousands of his pals with him, then Drew sure as shit wasn’t going to ignore that fact.
He walked under the ship, looking for a way inside. Thoughts of sneaking in and stowing away crossed his mind. He touched one of the wheels, looking at the ship’s underbelly, amazed at its size, width, and grandeur.
The ship, however, wasn’t large enough to take the miles of supplies on the other side of the facility, along with the number of people who needed those supplies, and the assembled buggies and small aircraft.
He took another picture.
Walking out from under the craft, he noticed offices in the distance. They needed to be photographed.
The first office was empty, items gathered up and placed in taped boxes. He went to grab for one of the boxes to rip it open, to look for anything that might give him a clue at what this place really was and what was really happenin
g, and thought better of it. He needed to be meticulous and a ripped apart box would be a dead giveaway that someone had been here.
He went to the next office. It was the same as the last, except more boxes filled the room.
The third office was empty except for three filing cabinets in the back. He turned on the overhead light, opened the first cabinet, and rifled through contents.
Hundreds of files stared back at him. Perhaps thousands. Why hadn’t they been digitized? How old was this damned program? A name caught his eye. Couldn’t be. He grabbed the file and pulled it from the cabinet.
There it was, plain as day: Kaden Jaxx. Drew slumped against the wall. What were the odds? Here he was, in the bowels of a secret building, which housed some secret program to take people off-world and he’d found a file dedicated to his uncle. He opened it. Almost the entire file had been redacted. It was nothing but blackout and gibberish. Still, it meant his uncle figured—and figured big—in this enterprise, though he was still confused about the program’s goal.
Drew took a picture of the file number and put the folder back into the filing cabinet.
He walked straight ahead and pushed another door open, feeling yet another cool draft. He stepped through the doorway and onto clay-like soil. Lights glowed from above, lighting up a massive tunnel that a cruise liner could easily float through. He stared into the cavernous space, incredulous. “Holy shit.”
Four single rails, similar to the rails used for monorail systems, were parallel to each other and set far apart. The tunnel was wide, but why was the ceiling so high?
He walked down the tunnel, touching the monorail. Chilly, meaning it hadn’t been used in a while. He placed his ear on it, wondering if he could hear a distant sound of a potential train.
Silence.
A moment later, chaos.
The rail vibrated. And a sound like rushing water echoed through the tunnel, soft at first, then louder and louder. He eyed the tunnel, backing up as fast as he could. A single light, faint, grew bigger, and headed his way. Whatever it was, it was coming at an incredible speed.
The Complete Atlantis Series, Books 1 - 5: Ascendant Saga Page 12
