The Centaurus Legacy (The Adventures of Heck Thomas)

by Tom Bielawski

  “What is it?” she asked, her blue eyes peeking out from her blond hair. Most nurses kept their hair pulled back tight and out of their face, but Heck knew one who always let her hair down in the break room.

  “Uh, disturbance at the nurse’s station ma’am. They need all nurses there right away.” Heck tried to keep Dooly between himself and the nurse, but it was no use. The nurse was more intent on the voice she recognized than on what Heck was saying. Dooly scowled and rolled his eyes.

  “Really? My alert isn’t going off.” This was a problem. If Chloe recognized him, she could ruin everything.

  “Just came from there ma’am. They told me to knock on the break room door. Sorry to bother you.” Heck turned and acted as though he were taking Dooly back toward Block 14.

  “Wait!” she said, staring intently at the pair. “I know who you are.”

  Heck froze in his tracks. “You really should go to the nurse’s station, ma’am.”

  There was a long pause as the nurse walked up and stood in front of him. She searched his eyes and saw Heck’s silent plea. Nurse Chloe knew Heck Thomas very well. They had a romantic relationship that Heck had ended when things began to get serious. He hated himself for doing it, but he couldn’t commit to her and that was what she needed. Heck had sensed that Chloe would want him to retire and settle down, and that was something Heck Thomas wasn’t going to do. For anyone.

  “Alright then,” she said quietly. “I think I’d better go to the nurse’s station. Why don’t you grab a snack in the break room for you and your dep, I mean your prisoner?” It’s nice and quiet in there and you can relax. No one will know you took a break from your duties.“

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Heck said with heartfelt gratitude. “That means a lot.” He watched as Chloe walked away from the break room and he wondered if he’d ever see her again to thank her for turning a blind eye. As she left he saw something sparkling on left hand and knew she’d helped him out of the kindness of her heart. She had moved on.

  “Come on lover boy!” Dooly shoved him with his shoulder. “I’m hungry!”

  Heck and Dooly slipped into the break room and locked the door. Dooly took off his handcuffs and Heck walked over to the trash chute.

  “Ready?”

  “Why the hell not? I’ve been beat up, shocked, cuffed, and humiliated today. Why not die in a heap of biological waste?”

  “That’s the spirit!”

  ***

  Heck climbed into the chute first and was thankful that it was more of a slide than a shaft. The chute was steep and straight and large enough to accommodate himself and even the large framed Dooly. The shaft smelled horribly and the darkness was somewhat terrifying.

  What a way to find you’re mildly claustrophobic, he thought wryly.

  After a few seconds of sliding through the pitch black garbage chute, Heck found himself falling through the air very far above the trash strewn floor. Having served on several protection details for the Prime Minister and other government officials, Heck was very familiar with the layout of Palace Drift. Part of the responsibility of being on those highly esteemed, yet laborious, protection details was the planning phase. Every nook and cranny of the Drift had to be mapped. And after it was mapped it was mapped again, and again, and again, by an actual agent, or Marshal, or officer; even the garbage chutes and containment areas had to be mapped and any likely infiltration or escape route had to be watched.

  On Heck’s first detail he’d managed to pull the odious duty of watching this very route, personally. He’d been here before and knew that this chamber was close to the gravity plating control room which was, by its nature, possessed of a much lower gravity field. The effects of the lower gravity spilled over in the surrounding areas and gradually increased the farther away from the control room until Earth gravity was reached.

  So when Heck landed on the piles of refuse and waste, it was in fact a soft landing. Heck quickly rolled to the side and waded through the waist deep piles of refuse as Dooly fell gently behind him. Once they got used to the lower gravity, they were able to vault over the trash piles and minimize their contact with the filth.

  “If they know this is an infiltration route, why ain’t it guarded or watched?”

  “It’s only guarded or watched when VIPs are moving around. And it’s too much trouble to place surveillance cams down here. Like the sewers back on Tombstone Drift. Nobody guards the sewer system, or even cares that it’s there until somebody important comes to town.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “Next, we kill the Prime Minister.”

  Chapter Nine

  Special Agent Hall of the Commonwealth Bureau of Investigation turned off his holophone. He knew, somewhere, his boss was cursing him. Perhaps he was even angry enough that an ‘accident’ might be arranged on Hall’s behalf. He smiled grimly at the thought, perusing data files at a computer station in the Marshals Service headquarters on Palace Drift.

  David Hall was a good cop, and Revelier knew it. But Revelier wasn’t counting on something, and that was Hall’s unwillingness to bend to his master’s will of late. Revelier was Revelier and he would think that he could find a way to intimidate or browbeat Hall into doing what his boss wanted. Not anymore. Hall knew that something big was happening and it involved Special Agent In Charge, Gem Revelier.

  Hall had been the lead agent in the Technology Crimes Division of the Bureau for most of his career, before being scooped up for administrative work by Revelier. In his youth, Hall had been a bit of a vigilante hacker. Eventually he got bored with only seeing one side of the data streams and wanted to become part of something more adventurous. In his late teens he enlisted in the Commonwealth Fleet. Due to his incredible technological skills and his brilliant mind, Hall had been quickly recruited by the Fleet Intelligence Directorate and was put to work in the Signals Division. Signals Division monitored communications of all types to detect threats to the Commonwealth, and developed cutting edge encryption algorithms to protect Commonwealth communications. But there was something else Signals Division was well known for: designing - and breaking - every technological security protocol and standard used by the Commonwealth government. From there it was a straight path to the Commonwealth Law Enforcement Academy and on to the Bureau.

  As he sat in front of the holocomputer, Hall’s conscious wrestled with what he was about to do. Not for fear of getting caught. No, Hall had no doubt about his skills to disarm the security features and access the virtual tunnels to higher systems that many did not know existed; or denied that they did. Rather it was the fear of what he might find. Anything Gem Revelier was involved with could, easily, go to the highest levels of government. If that were the case, there would be little he could do stop whatever was coming. Eventually, patriotism outweighed prudence and self-preservation. Were there any ideals of more importance than that?

  Hall didn’t think so.

  Within seconds he’d established a dummy data stream running programs and applications pertaining to the financial and economic trends of the late 21st Century; a topic so incredibly boring he needn’t worry about shoulder surfers peeking at his business. A few seconds more and he was accessing the hidden tunneling protocols that were not supposed to exist, which led him to hidden computer systems that were not supposed to exist.

  Before his eyes lay a virtual desktop with seemingly innocuous virtual file cabinets. Some of these little cabinets had virtual drawers that popped open when he tapped them with his finger. Hall wasn’t fooled by the names, they were neither innocuous nor randomly generated. Each name was a complex cipher. To any person who hacked this far into the system, these cabinets and files would be utterly meaningless without the key that would allow them to decode the names. Then, there would be self-destruct defenses in place should the cipher be cracked improperly. Finally, the data itself would be encrypted and further hidden within layers of truly innocuous data.

  Hall knew all this because he’d helped to desig
n it. He knew the key to the cipher, he’d created many of the self-destruct defenses, and he’d personally written the algorithm used to encrypt the data. In minutes he was inside the virtual cabinet containing a file called “Centaurus Expedition.” Of course, the file wasn’t titled so until he’d broken through all the defenses and encryption. He remembered creating this very cabinet so long ago when he was a youth in the Commonwealth Fleet writing protocols; he hadn’t been allowed to read any of the data, of course.

  When he’d examined the data on the dead informant’s holotablet, buried very far down, he’d found obscure references to a wormhole. At first Hall hadn’t given it much thought. Wormholes in space had never been proven to exist. When Revelier revealed that Marshal Thomas had helped the Ryevolutzia gain control of Alamo Drift, Hall was shocked. Everyone knew that Gesellschaft was using it to conduct their illegal mining operations. Admittedly, Gesellschaft was an anomaly. No law enforcement or intelligence entity had ever successfully penetrated Gesellschaft beyond the lowest levels of the organization. So a true understanding of them was lacking. Gesellschaft literally meant ‘Perfect Society.’ The goal of the group was to create a super-race from the stock of certain ancient Earth bloodlines. It seemed that being a true sociopath with sadistic and cruel tendencies was a requirement for membership, along with being from whatever ‘pure’ gene pool they thought appropriate. Their initiation rights were so barbaric and brutal that many didn’t survive them. And no one wanted to volunteer to spy on those crazy bastards.

  With Alamo Drift’s inhospitable location, deadly radioactive waste, and alleged haunting, the rest of the criminal world was content to leave it to Gesellschaft. As had the Commonwealth.

  Hall thought it was curious that Ryevolutzia was interested in taking that away from Gesellschaft, so he decided to research the drift’s history. And what he found was utterly useless. Strikingly useless, in fact. It was so useless as to make Hall think that perhaps that was the intent of whoever created the files pertaining to it. After hours of scrutiny, Hall had found only one cabinet that seemed suspicious enough to possess hidden data. When he cracked a new file he found obscure references to an element called U-999, which had been the focus of the mining operations of the ancient drift and wormhole. The data was incomplete and there were many gaps. There wasn’t enough information there for him to understand anything beyond the obvious; the U-999 was being mined to study its effects on wormholes. But no one had ever seen a wormhole or proved that they existed beyond science fiction novels and movies.

  Until today.

  Revelier had enough data in his ‘secret’ virtual cabinets to fill in all the holes. The early years of space exploration had been driven by the desire to move Earth’s population beyond our solar system. The fear was that the population would outgrow the planet and its resources triggering war, famine and destruction. Along with the movement to seek naturally occurring resources within our solar system was a project whose goal was to explore and colonize worlds thought to be habitable by the space telescopes of the 21st Century. It was a commonly held belief, and all the history books supported the belief, that all such experiments had failed.

  What Hall was reading now, however, seemed to dispute those long held truths. A great experiment, called ‘The Centaurus Project,’ had been conducted in a suspicious area of space located between the Asteroid Belt and Jupiter. It had been called ‘suspicious’ because several space telescopes had recorded the inexplicable appearance of two asteroids from that location. These asteroids seemingly appeared from nowhere and subsequently disappeared into nowhere. The event had been classified at the highest levels of all the governments involved at the time.

  Unmanned expeditions to the region confirmed the suspicions of scientists that something was very bizarre about that place. Scientists began to theorize that perhaps the anomaly was a wormhole, a place where time and space joined physically and theoretically allowed one to travel vast distances in brief moments of time. Several manned expeditions followed where data was collected but scientists had been unable to force the wormhole to open. Finally, a discovery had been made that enriched uranium seemed to trigger noticeable effects on the wormhole but failed to control it. After experimenting with various forms of uranium, scientists learned enough to theorize a way to operate the wormhole; at least enough to cause it to open. And what they needed was a form of uranium with very specific properties, one that was as yet undiscovered.

  When discoveries of naturally occurring variants of elements found on Earth were made in the Asteroid Belt; officials in charge of the Centaurus Project watched very closely. Finally, government forces took over one particular mining operation from a drift called Alamo Drift.

  Hall sat back a moment and pretended to rub his eyes and stretch. No one was paying him any attention. He dwelled a moment on what he’d found. Clearly, Ryevolutzia found the connection between Alamo Drift and the Centaurus Project. How they knew was something of a question. Perhaps the Ukrainians or Russians had been part of that project, neither of those nations had ever been very good at keeping secrets. Another possibility, one which Hall wished fervently wasn’t true, was that someone sold the information to the Ryevolutzia. That was unlikely due to the very high level of security, and low level of knowledge surrounding the information. But, once something entered a person’s head, it could easily exit their mouth. So however distasteful it was, Hall had to admit the possibility. And the only person he knew of with the knowledge was his boss, Gem Revelier.

  It didn’t really matter at this point, however, as Hall’s goal wasn’t the indictment of his boss. Right now he had to see where this plot went and what its purpose was. In any case, a functional wormhole device could easily shift the balance of power in the solar system. In the hands of a rogue state, or a non-Commonwealth state, the very existence of the Commonwealth could be threatened. Hall envisioned warheads equipped with wormhole devices that could cause a target to disappear into a void of time and space. He didn’t know if such a thing were possible, but he did believe that he couldn’t be the only person thinking it.

  He continued reading.

  The Centaurus Project advanced in leaps and bounds with the discovery of various forms of uranium. Each experiment seemed closer to having success with actually manipulating a wormhole. Experiments in other areas where there had been no suspicious activities yielded results encouraging to the project staff. It seemed that the wormhole effects could be manipulated in places where there was no known wormhole. Finally, the introduction of the newest element discovered yielded the results that the project staff really wanted. The wormhole could be manipulated at will. The new element was uranium 999, or simply U-999. It was given this strange designation due to the unbelievable array of never-before-seen properties it possessed. The element had the potential to affect standing matter, to manipulate time and space, to disturb gravitational fields and more. But it had a terribly negative side effect: intense and deadly radioactivity.

  The counter radiation technology of the time was sophisticated enough to withstand the powers of U-999, but only for short periods of time. Large amounts of money were spent on endless replacements of radiation suits and plating. Casualties were reported as being too horrific to disclose and corpses had been launched into space to prevent further destruction. Hall found that bit of information odd.

  Not wanting to be bogged down with minutia, Hall scanned the data for more pertinent information. Finally he found it.

  Two spacecraft named after the famous Mars rovers of the early 21st Century, Spirit and Opportunity, were built and equipped to enter the wormhole. Due to the incredible nature of the Centaurus Project technology and the bizarre effects of U-999, the mission remained classified at the highest levels. Scientists estimated that the spacecraft would emerge from another wormhole near a planet located within the Centaurus Constellation. Centaurus had the distinction of possessing the nearest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, which had been thought to be devoid
of habitable worlds.

  Hall shook his head at that, even today the fastest spacecraft could barely attain one-quarter the speed of light in short bursts. With the fears of impending global devastation at the time, it was no wonder governments were eager to see how this technology played out. If they couldn’t use it to travel the stars, perhaps they could use it to wipe out their enemies in the coming armageddon.

  Immediately after Spirit entered the wormhole, all contact with the ship had been lost. The same had been true of unmanned expeditions through the wormhole prior to this point and so was not unexpected. What they had hoped was that the large crew could travel through the wormhole and conduct experiments and record data from the planet beyond and return one month later using the wormhole device. When a month had passed without contact, Opportunity was tasked with going through the wormhole after Spirit to rescue the crew and return with the necessary data.

  Opportunity failed to return within the allotted time as well. Hall read that several more manned ships were sent through the wormhole, along with a number of probes and satellites, but nothing ever returned. Finally, the casualty rate and odd effects from exposure to U-999 coupled with the loss of the explorers, caused the Centaurus Project to be shut down. The terrible side effects of the element known as U-999 had been determined to far outweigh the positive benefits. All of the government entities involved deemed it best that the Centaurus Project and U-999 be forgotten.

  The project was deemed such a failure that all of the equipment, data, space craft and the wormhole devices, were jettisoned through the wormhole to be forgotten. And at about the same time, breakthroughs in terraforming and artificial gravity made the need for manned extra-solar exploration seem unnecessary. The project was dead.

  Until now.

  Hall backed out of the virtual cabinet and searched around Revelier’s other cabinets for anything that might cement the connection. He felt like he was wasting his time and risking apprehension for treason for nothing. Certainly the Centaurus Project amounted to a record-breaking cover-up, but it had occurred before the existence and jurisdiction of the Commonwealth. There was no one alive today who had anything at all to do with it.