The Sol 3 Agenda

by Brian Kitchen

  “I see,” Morann said musingly. “The type of safe that you have described will only open for someone with a particular genetic code, just as the Menhir only operated for someone with Aos Si genes like yourself. There are therefore two possibilities. One is that you are mistaken in your assumption that your grandfather thought that there would be something in the safe. The second is of course that you are correct.” John noticed that Morann was talking quite formally, which she still did when she was analysing a situation. She was also studying him closely. “If of course you are correct in your thinking that your grandfather did expect something to be in the safe, possibly the map that he is seeking, then the question has to asked as to why he had not opened the safe himself to find out. He will have the same genes as yourself and could easily have done so.”

  “Are you suggesting then that he didn’t have the correct genetic code sequencing to open it?” John said, realisation striking him like a thunderbolt.

  “That can be the only assumption. All of our databases have no records of John Trevaskis Senior from 1954 until this present time of 1973.”

  “Then if that’s the case that he isn’t my grandfather, then who is he? Because he looks very much like this photograph I have of my grandfather,” John put his hand into the suit jacket pocket that he’d put the photo of his grandfather in, after he’d been looking at it before. He needed to look at it again. Something else however was now in the pocket along with photo. It felt like a piece of folded paper. John took the photo and the folded piece of paper out of the pocket. Handing the photo to Morann, he unfolded the paper, which had been folded into four. Looking at the paper he saw someone had written on it.

  Your grandfather and Terry are not who you think they are. You are in great danger John Trevaskis. Dord Fiann

  “What’s the matter John?” Morann asked concernedly. She had seen the colour drain from his face as he read the note. John handed the note to her.

  “Your grandfather and Terry are not who you think they are. You are in danger John Trevaskis. Dord Fiann,” Morann read the words aloud. Then turned to John. “Have you any idea who put this note in your pocket?”

  “None whatsoever,” John managed to reply still stunned at what he had read.

  “Could it have been Catherine Penrose?”

  “No, I checked the jacket pockets when I put it on. Sometimes jacket pockets are sewn up and as I always use the pockets, I wanted to make sure that they weren’t,” John explained. “There was nothing in either pocket then and there certainly wasn’t anything in the pocket, when I put the photo into it.”

  “Well, obviously someone put the note in your pocket John and is trying to warn us.”

  “Dord Fiann.”

  “Dord Fiann, John?” Morann questioned.

  “Could that be the name of whoever put it in my pocket?”

  “No John,” Morann said shaking her head. “Dord Fiann isn’t anyone’s name. It’s the battle cry of the Fianna.”

  “The Fianna? I thought they were a myth.” Morann shook her head. Then John had a sudden thought. “Hold on, I’ve just remembered that the receptionist at Snodgrass and Wedlock, brushed by me twice, rather closely in fact. Could she have put it in my pocket?”

  “That’s a possibility, John, that we can’t rule out. Something else is bothering you, John. What is it?”

  “My grandfather and my father apparently got on really well and had respect for each other and yet my grandfather hasn’t mentioned him at all. I meant to ask my grandfather whether he’d been in touch with him, but didn’t get around to it. I meant to get in touch with my father myself but with the whirlwind pace at which events have moved since I came back to Earth, I haven’t yet got around to it.”

  “Would you like me to see if I can find anything out?”

  “Please Morann,” John answered.

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Whether my dad’s still in Trentbury for a start,” John replied. “He might have cleared off somewhere else with Susan, for all I know.”

  “I will search all the UK data banks and find out what I can,” Morann told him.

  “Will there be any?” John asked, not knowing how technically advanced things would be in this era in the UK.

  “Not so much in this time, but I can access all the future data banks by linking into the ones that are available on the Sol 6 Base. As you know we have travelled extensively into the future of this planet. I will establish a link first with our Deltoid and it will then patch me through to the Sol 6 Base. It will only take a few seconds.”

  John could see Morann’s eyes blinking rapidly which meant she was receiving vast amounts of information which she was searching through for the information that she required. When she’d finished sifting through it all, she turned to John with a look of great concern on her face.

  “Your father has vanished, John. I can’t find any records of him anywhere. When did you last see your father?”

  “Not since the morning that I left home before going to Cornwall.”

  “Tell me what happened that day,” Morann requested.

  “I’d had a row with him and Susan, the night before and I got up early and left the house before they’d got up.” John explained. “I finished my shift at work early and didn’t even go to find him my dad who was still working, to say goodbye to him. In fact, I didn’t even see him at work that day, but I do know he was there as his clock card had been stamped in. When I got home, no-one was about, not even Susan and so I just grabbed my rucksack and cleared off into town. I had a burger at the Wimpy bar with my mates and then we all went off to the cinema to see the ‘The Wild Bunch’. The train I was going to catch didn’t leave Trentbury until midnight you see. Then after watching the film I went to the railway station to catch the train to London. I suppose that I was expecting my dad to come and see me off on the train. He knew which one I was catching, but he didn’t show up.”

  “According to the data that I found out, your father disappeared the night that you left Trentbury for London,” Morann then told him. “He apparently went straight from work to the pub and was drinking in there up until closing time. Your father was seen leaving the pub, ‘The Square and Compass’, but wasn’t seen again. With you disappearing as well, there was a police inquiry.”

  “A police inquiry, what missing persons,” John managed to say, shocked at the news.

  “No, there were suspicions that your father had been murdered and at first that you were responsible. Susan Gill, your father’s girlfriend, had told them that you and your father had argued and that you’d threatened your father and her with violence and that when she had tried to intervene in the argument, that you’d hit her.”

  “That’s not true!” John angrily declared. “I didn’t hit Susan and I didn’t threaten either her or my dad with violence. I’m not like that Morann!”

  “I know that, John.”

  “We argued as I said, but I’d never hit a woman,” John repeated. “In fact, Susan started shouting and screaming at me and I just turned around and walked out of the house.”

  “I can confirm that, John. The protection team saw you leave and heard the row continuing after you had left. Your friends also vouched that you were with them that night and that they went with you to the railway station, to see you off on the train.”

  “So, what could have happened to my father?”

  “No one knows. Something out of the ordinary happened that night. A localised electronic pulse knocked out the protection team for three hours. Electronic pulses can disable most androids,” Morann explained. “They’re not as sophisticated, as ones like myself. The pulse interferes with their microprocessors, causing them to temporarily cease the task that they are currently engaged in.”

  “So, what happens? Do they keel over?” John asked.

  “No, it puts them onto an emergency programme, which means they immediately seek a safe place and then they shut down. In the case of the protection
androids, they would have gone back into the houses they lived in and sat down somewhere.”

  “I see. What about the police investigation? Did it find anything out?”

  “The police investigated both your disappearances for about six months and then a decision was made to close the investigation. The decision to do so came from a higher authority, outside of the local police authority.”

  “What do you mean by that?” John asked.

  “The decision was made by someone at the Home Office.”

  “The Home Office? Why were they involved?”

  “I don’t know John, it’s a mystery,” Morann answered. “Someone obviously intervened, but who and why I really don’t know. The fact that an electronic pulse was used that night, however, leads me to believe that it was involvement by someone Aos Si, perhaps a rogue Imperial group.”

  “So, what happened to Susan?”

  Morann gave a little smile.

  “A month after the announcement that the police investigation of your disappearances was to be closed, Susan Gill left Trentbury, saying that she couldn’t live there anymore,” Morann then told him. “Not only did she leave Trentbury, but she too appears to have completely disappeared. I strongly believe that Susan Gill was a Leanan Sidhe.”

  John hadn’t heard of the Leanan Sidhe before.

  “What’s a Leanan Sidhe?” He asked.

  “It’s a genetically engineered Aos Si who has enhanced telepathic and other psychic powers. They are very beautiful and have genetically engineered pheromones which they release in large quantities making them irresistible to men.” Morann answered John’s question and then noticed that John was looking rather embarrassed.

  “I see that you may have experienced the effects of that. Was it with Susan?” Morann asked him. John nodded.

  John had to reluctantly admit to himself that Susan had been very beautiful with a curvaceous figure and long silky, blonde hair and he was further embarrassed to have to admit that he had lusted after her, which hadn’t seemed right to him, being as she was his father’s lover. Susan had also had a soft, seductive voice, apart from the last night that he’d spent at home when she’d screamed abuse at him, making it crystal clear that she didn’t want him to go to Cornwall for some reason.

  “She didn’t want me to go to Cornwall, which is why we rowed that night,” John said quietly, almost to himself.

  “I wonder why that was,” Morann said thoughtfully.

  “What do you think happened to my father, Morann?”

  “I think we have to fear the worst,” Morann answered, after some consideration. “Leanan Sidhe often work in tandem with Siabhra, who are trained assassins. It is very possible that your father was indeed murdered. If that’s the case, then I very much doubt that his body will ever be found.” Morann thought it prudent not to mention, that if an assassination had been carried out, then the body would probably have been incinerated to a very fine ash.

  “So, what do we do now, Morann? If the note is correct, then we could be in danger.”

  “I think we have to find the map your grandfather is seeking, which means we have to go back to 1970, but we’ll need some help with that. Come on we need to go back to the Deltoid.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~

  John Trevaskis Senior looked out of his study window and looked to see if John Junior was anywhere about. He’d earlier seen him walk in the direction of the walled garden, but no, there was no sign of him. He heard a knock at the door.

  “Enter,” he called out. Terry walked in. “Close the door Terry,” John Senior instructed him. “We may have a problem.” Terry closed the door and then looked curiously at his employer, knowing better than to speak before John Senior did. “I think the boy is getting far too curious. He questioned why I needed the map and didn’t seem very satisfied with my answer.”

  “It wasn’t in the safe then?”

  “No,” John Senior shook his head. “Oisin must have taken it as I had suspected.”

  “Then what do we do now?”

  “As I planned, you will accompany John Trevaskis and Morann to a future time, not 1970 however, but 1986, I think. I’m sure our old friend Albert Brown can accommodate John Trevaskis in the high security prison on the Isle of Wight. The android we will dispose of. Go and find John, Terry and bring him here to me.”

  John Senior had had no intention of sending John and Morann back to 1970, he’d known that if the map wasn’t in the safe now, it wouldn’t have been there in 1970 either. It had all been a ruse to get John to open the safe for him. John Trevaskis Senior wasn’t John’s grandfather and in fact he wasn’t even Aos Si, which was why he couldn’t open the safe himself. His real name would have been unpronounceable to anyone on this planet, sounding merely like a series of sibilant hisses of slightly different tones. In fact, the nearest approximation of his name was JT and that was ironic, as it was also the initials of the man that he had killed and taken the identity of.

  JT was from a minor planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, sent to assassinate those whom the Andromedans had thought had been responsible for causing the almost extinction of their race. The Andromedans had evolved from a parasitic worm, which over billions of years had developed into an intelligent lifeform which could inhabit and control any form of life. Their preferred lifeforms however were intelligent bipeds and humans and Aos Si were the ideal hosts. The Civil War between the Aos Si and the Varns, along with the war that the Aos Si had also waged against the Fomoire had devastated their race, killing off thousands of their kind along with their hosts. Then the Infertility Plague had reduced the Andromedans’ numbers even further to perilously close to extinction levels.

  Even after the war, when a cure had been found for the Infertility Plague, the Andromedans had not recovered. As one of the few surviving Andromedans, JT had sworn vengeance on those he had thought responsible for the genocide of his race. He considered the leaders of the Aos Si and the Varns to be those culpable and when he’d learned that they were to be imprisoned, rather than being executed for their war crimes, he’d sworn to exterminate them all. Before JT could carry this out however, he had learnt that John Trevaskis Senior had escaped from his prison. This didn’t stop JT however, who vowed to hunt the Varn leader down and kill him.

  Meantime, John Trevaskis Senior had discovered that the Andromedan assassin was on his trail and using time travel had managed to stay one step ahead of JT until one day in 1960, when JT had finally caught up with him. The assassination had been very easy, JT had managed to take as his host a woman that John Trevaskis loved and trusted and rather than killing Trevaskis, he took control of him instead. When JT had made the transference to John Trevaskis Senior’s body, the woman had been left to die when her body was discarded. The host being aware, but unable to intervene to stop JT doing this, would have caused John Trevaskis Senior great pain and gave JT great satisfaction.

  JT decided to remain on Sol 3, or Earth, as he now knew it. It was far better than the sun scorched, desert planet that JT came from. Of course, there was always the possibility of someone suspecting that JT was not who he said he was. Although JT inhabited and controlled John Trevaskis Senior’s body, JT’s personality was far different. Fortunately, the number of people who had known John Trevaskis Senior personally was very limited. His daughter, her husband and their son were his only family. He apparently had no close friends and so JT had felt confident that he could pull the deception off.

  More importantly however, by now JT had begun to realise that the Earth had a lot of resources his people desperately needed, but he knew that his people were too weak to take them by force. Earth needed to be conquered, or controlled, but how was JT to do this without attracting the attention of the Aos Si Confederation, who he knew were still monitoring the planet. Then JT had a brilliant idea. He had seen by now how the various political systems on Earth worked and also knew which countries on the planet were the major powers. He needed to control those countries through their political
systems but knowing that he couldn’t do it on his own, he needed to find an ally and find one fast.

  Unfortunately, things had then began to go badly wrong for JT. At first no one had suspected that JT wasn’t who he maintained he was. Then Trevaskis’ daughter and her husband had started to have suspicions. JT then knew that he needed to act fast. For a master assassin like JT, these were simple matters to deal with. He assassinated the daughter in 1959, blowing her up in an explosion that at the time had been blamed on the Aos Si Imperials. After that her husband had become even more suspicious of him, but JT had managed to allay those suspicions.

  Fortunately, Tom Trevaskis had become involved with a woman, who JT suspected to be a Leanan Sidhe planted by the Aos Si Imperials. Tom forgot all his doubts about John Trevaskis Senior and had become enthralled by the beautiful blonde. John Trevaskis Junior had been more of a problem, however. He wasn’t a child anymore but growing up fast and he’d not got on at all well with Susan Gill, as the woman was known to him and his father. Things had got even worse as John had got older and become a teenager and possibly the raging hormones of a young man, had had something to do with the problems that had arisen. The final row between him, his father and Susan had to led to John Trevaskis Junior leaving Trentbury and when he had disappeared completely, well, JT had sincerely hoped that the boy had gone for good.

  Strangely, Tom Trevaskis had also disappeared the same night as his son and for a time JT had wondered whether John Trevaskis Junior had killed him as the police had first suspected. JT had always felt that Tom Trevaskis wasn’t the simple human workman that he presented himself as, but JT could never prove otherwise. A couple of years had gone by and as neither of them turned up, JT had come to the false conclusion that they wouldn’t be troubling him again. JT had therefore been profoundly shocked, when the boy, John Trevaskis Junior had turned up at Snodgrass and Wedlock’s offices that morning. JT had had to think quickly what to do and had decided to play the boy along for a while and then kill him.

  However, before dealing with him, JT realised that John Trevaskis Junior might be able to solve a problem that JT had been faced with. For some time, JT had been searching for a map. He had told the boy it was of an ice-free Antarctica, but this was a lie. It was in fact a map of where the members of the Triumvirate had been incarcerated. Having already dealt with the Morrigan, the Badhbh and the leader of the Varns, John Trevaskis Senior, JT only had one member of the Triumvirate left to deal with, the Nemhain, the most dangerous one of them all. JT also believed the map showed other locations that he was particularly interested in.