by Terry Mixon
“It’s not worth anyone’s life. Maybe we can catch it when it comes back into the system.”
She shook her head. “That might never happen. I’ll ask for volunteers to stay with me and try to turn the thrusters off. We couldn’t lay claim to something like this before, because international treaties say we can’t claim real estate, but that just changed. It’s moving. That makes this a ship. It’s salvage and I’m not giving up our claim.”
He bit back the first words that wanted to come out of his mouth. “And if you can’t stop it? You’ll all die slowly.”
“Then I better stop it. We’ve unloaded the supplies and we’re loading people now.”
“This is insane,” he said.
“Only if it doesn’t work. Wish me luck.”
* * * * *
Clayton woke when his phone rang and sat up groggily. It was three in the morning. “Yes?”
“Sir, we need you in the war room.”
His assistant wasn’t in the habit of summoning him in the middle of the night, so something was wrong. “I’ll be right there. Coffee and an egg sandwich, please.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
He dressed quickly and headed for the office they’d dubbed the “war room.” They’d outfitted it with all the most advanced communications equipment and the computers required to decipher transmissions from Liberty Station. His staff was all there.
“What’s happening?”
“We received a message from your son. He said to wake you. A data stream started coming in after that, but I felt it best to leave the decryption to you.”
Clayton nodded. “That’s fine. Let’s see what he has to say.”
The decryption of the video only took a few minutes. Understanding the incredible facts his son had laid out took a lot longer.
The comet could move. What a marvel that was. Particularly after all this time.
On the downside, anyone would be able to spot the change if Harry continued his pursuit. They’d gone to a lot of trouble to mask the comet. If they made a scene chasing after it, that would only serve to draw attention to it.
Luckily, his son wasn’t an idiot. He’d rescued every person he could from the base and was picking up the few that had jumped to safety. The final lifter had only barely made it there with the mining package. Another five minutes and even the fast craft couldn’t have caught it. Liberty Station was already decelerating for Mars.
The situation might remain unnoticed. That far from Earth, things were vague. The ship’s precise location was always somewhat fluid. As long as it didn’t take too long, the people here would be none the wiser.
The comet, on the other hand, might cause a lot of attention if people were watching it. Natural bodies did not speed up. And any large telescope on the planet might note the unusual position of the damned thing.
Or no one might. There was no way to tell. The only thing they could control was avoiding drawing undue attention to the situation.
Jessica Cook had decided to stay on the comet and attempt to turn off the engines. She’d kept three dozen volunteers with her. He only hoped she hadn’t doomed herself to a protracted and lonely death.
Chapter Eight
Without waiting for an invitation, Queen sat in one of the comfortable chairs set against the wall. He knew how unsettling that was to most people.
“Without knowing what you mean,” Kathleen Bennett said, “I’m unsure how to respond. Perhaps you could give me some context.”
Queen widened his professional smile. “A pattern has emerged linking many purportedly separate events over the last week together. I’ve come to discuss them with you and decide if you are an enemy of this nation.”
He watched how she responded to his charges. This should be very illuminating.
“An enemy of the US? Hardly. It would be simpler to discuss this in private. I can always throw you out later. Besides, the less time Agent Pembroke spends in my office, the lower the cleaning bill. Everyone, get out.”
Queen looked over at the FBI agent. “For the record, I think you brighten the room right up. If I think it needs airing out, rest assured I’ll call you right away.”
The FBI man inclined his head. “I stand ready to serve, Mister Secretary. Call me anytime.”
The lawyers left with disapproving scowls. Bennett’s assistant closed the door behind Pembroke, leaving the two of them alone.
“Well, Mister Secretary,” she said. “You certainly know how to make an entrance. Would you care for some refreshments before we begin?”
He rose to his feet. “Certainly. I see you have an admirably stocked bar. What would you like, Mrs. Bennett?”
“At eight in the morning?”
“The sun is over the yardarm somewhere.”
“Surprise me.”
He examined the bottles on the bar before opening the cabinet above it. “Ah, what have we here? A nice dusty bottle of…fifty year old single malt. This will do splendidly.
He set out two glasses and poured several fingers of amber. “I won’t soil it with ice. There’s no need to be sacrilegious.”
Queen offered her the choice of tumblers before resuming his seat and sipping his drink. As he’d suspected, it was excellent.
“Splendid,” he said. “I think the explosion at your chief of security’s house was part of a larger series of events that I’d like to understand more clearly.”
She didn’t react at all. “What larger events are we talking about?”
He smiled and shook a finger at her. “Don’t be coy, Mrs. Bennett! You’re engaged in a corporate war with your husband, aren’t you?
“The attack on your facility in Paris and the one here, the attack on the Yucatan Spaceport and Clayton Rogers’ hotel. The mysterious explosion near his space hotel turned spaceship. There’s even an attack on a jihadi camp in Africa to consider.”
She frowned. “I hadn’t heard about that last one. I don’t have anything there worth attacking. The place is a disaster. In any case, I’m not certain why this is of interest to the State Department.”
He widened his eyes in a mock show of concern. “Surely the State Department should be concerned when a prestigious company such as yours is attacked by a man intent on becoming his own nation.”
“I don’t care to have the government stick its nose into my business. My ex-husband and I have differing views on a great many things, but that’s one opinion we share. It was a large part of what drew us together in the first place.”
“Not love? That’s disappointing.”
“I suppose it’s rude to tell a high government official not to be an idiot, but do try,” she said after sipping her own drink. “I’m told the attack on the Paris facility was insurgents. France is in almost as bad a shape as North Africa and the Middle East, you know. They’ve allowed so many refugees in and failed to force them to assimilate. Now the jihadis are almost strong enough to take the city of lights away from them.
“Which is a tragedy on many levels. Mine is not the first target of a terrorist attack there, nor even the largest. Anyone with half a brain is getting the hell out of that place as fast as they can. Why should I blame my ex-husband for something that’s obviously the result of frothing fundamentalists?”
Queen inclined his head. “All of what you say about Paris is unfortunately true. It’s regrettable and deplorable that not a week goes by without an attack somewhere in Europe. You’d be horrified to know how many plots we’ve foiled over here.
“Not that I’d say so publicly, of course, but the conservatives’ knee-jerk rejection of barring refugees from that area into the United States may have slowed the progression of attacks here. It doesn’t make them right, you understand, but even a stopped clock is correct twice a day.”
He let that hang there for a few moments. “I don’t believe in coincidence. The only question in my mind is who to go after to get the answers I need. The way I see it, you can either tell me what’s going on and I take m
y frustration out on your ex-husband, or I find out the truth for myself and punish the one I can still get my hands on.
“I can make one call to my close friend, the attorney general, and get the FBI the search warrant they’re looking for. What do you think they’ll find if they dig deeply enough?”
Queen smiled. “Which way do you want to play this, Mrs. Bennett?”
* * * * *
Jess wanted to scratch her nose, but the clear helmet of her suit made that impossible. Ignoring an irritating itch was the hardest thing about working for long periods in vacuum. And she’d been in it for more hours than she cared to contemplate.
Ray Proudfoot and his people had found a suitable room on a nearby level they could block off with a portable airlock. There were heaters and chillers that could make the room tolerable.
Harry and Liberty Station had already begun decelerating for Mars. The extra speed they’d generated keeping up with the runaway comet bumped up their arrival time by almost two full days.
Nothing they’d picked up from Earth indicated anyone there was aware of the comet speeding away from where it should be. That was good.
With a ship named Liberty Station, it didn’t seem too much of a jump to call the comet Freedom Express. It was certainly on a nonstop route.
Doctors Young and Powell had stayed with her small team of raving lunatics. That was good, since they were the only hope she had of deciphering the text on the screen. Nothing they’d tried had changed their course or acceleration in the slightest.
Paulette Young had the most experience with the translation efforts, such as they were. So she was running what they saw next to the new destination on the screen through the computers to see what they said.
Damned little, unfortunately.
“A number of the words don’t have direct translations, I’m afraid,” the woman said. “At least not yet. The best I can figure is the part that says ‘destination unavoidable,’ though I’m pretty sure it means the destination is locked in. The rest we don’t have a frame of reference.
“We need a larger sample size of these kinds of terms and more certainty in what they mean. Once we have that, we can keep grinding away on the specifics and at least get a sense for what they mean.”
Jess was afraid of that. “How long might that take?”
The other woman shrugged, though it was hard to see inside her suit. “Damned if I know. Weeks? Months? Hopefully, not years.”
“If it takes weeks, we’ll be at our destination. Less if this thing keeps increasing the rate of acceleration.”
The sun’s gravity would normally slow the comet as it raced out of the inner system. By the time it reached the outer system, it would be crawling along. Not this time.
Not only was their speed increasing, but the rate at which the comet ship was accelerating was going up, too. It was the equivalent to a car accelerating, but the driver still having more accelerator to push. As she sped up, she could still press harder on the pedal and speed the car even further.
Jess suspected the comet’s body was what was keeping it from just dropping the hammer. Too much acceleration might fracture the thing into pieces. That would be very bad for the people inside it, so there was probably a safety mechanism.
“Well, even if it isn’t helpful for us in this situation, surely you have some of the Voynich Manuscript and the dead guy’s diary translated. What can you tell me about them?”
“The translation of the Voynich Manuscript is somewhat more straightforward, but the addition of the second translation, from Old Italian to English, and accounting for inconsistencies due to the lack of complete fluency on the part of the author has been making that more difficult.”
“Lack of fluency in which language?” Jess asked.
“Italian, I think. The translation on those few pages between the unknown language and Italian seem to have been an exercise. His or her grasp of Old Italian was not complete, I suspect.
“The parts we’ve been able to convert to Old Italian and then to English seem to be a listing of plants and some of their properties. The naked people aren’t explained, so I suspect they serve to distract anyone who might otherwise be overly curious about the unknown text. Most people in that day and time wouldn’t be able to read, so they could be told a fanciful story about the pictures.”
That wasn’t very useful. A listing of imaginary plants didn’t help anyone.
“What about the diary?”
“We’re making some progress, but we thought we had more time. There are large areas of the text that are difficult to translate. The man’s handwriting is inconsistent and more than a bit sloppy.” She said that last with a tone of disapproval.
Jess wished the news was better, but she had to admit she hadn’t expected anything else. “That has to be the priority for you two. Keep crunching the data you have and we’ll bring anything we find in written form to you to add to the list.
“The words on the piloting screen are the most important, but it would be nice to get out of these suits. To do that, we need to figure out the life support controls.”
The other woman nodded. “We’ll give it everything we have. The larger the sample size, the more likely we are to have a breakthrough. I’ll keep you informed.”
Jess watched the other woman walk away. This task seemed impossible, but they’d make it work. They had to.
* * * * *
Nathan looked over the initial intelligence his men had gathered. The three dead mobsters were exactly who their IDs claimed. Two were nothing more than muscle. The third one—the driver—was somewhat higher in the food chain.
Vincenzo Battaglia had been the equivalent of a front line manager in the mob. Not one of the little fish, but not so far removed from them. He reported to Luca Russo. That man controlled a district here in Rome and was definitely not a small time hood.
With the killings so fresh, the mob was hunting them, so getting to the man would be challenging. Nathan had a few people trying to pin down where he was so they could assess how difficult that would be.
Meanwhile, he’d located the executor for the estate of the dead prison mobster, Alessio Romano. She was a lawyer, of course.
Vanessa Messina. She’d know where his belongings were located and probably had some idea where any images of the papers were stored.
She worked for one of the most prestigious firms in Rome. Getting in to see her was out of the question. She was a mob lawyer. She’d scream for help the moment he showed up.
Instead, he sat in the back of a van watching her building. She lived in an apartment close by her office, so the odds were that she walked.
Miss Messina must not have been a hard worker. She strolled out of her office just after four in the afternoon. She headed down the sidewalk with a confident strut.
Nathan got out of the van and slipped into the crowd behind her. This would not be a quiet snatch and run, but he’d verified this area didn’t have any damned cameras to record events. Other than those in the crowd itself. He’d have to make sure it happened quickly to avoid ending up on the Internet.
His men had stolen two vans. One to use for the brazen, daylight kidnapping, and the other for a more sedate getaway. It wouldn’t do for some traffic camera to lead the police right back to them.
As for the strike, he saw the perfect opportunity coming up. The traffic lights were going to catch her on this side of the street, but near the front of the crowd. He signaled his team to start moving.
When the light turned red and everyone stopped, he pulled a stun gun from his jacket pocket and stuck it into the small of her back. The noise was quite distinctive, but in the press of people, they’d have difficulty telling where it came from.
The lawyer slumped with a choked cry, but he wrapped his arm around her waist, supporting her. The van made a right hand turn and the door slid open. Nathan casually jumped inside with the woman and they were gone.
“They’re calling the police as we speak,�
�� he said as he cuffed the stunned woman. “Get us to the other van right away.”
He spent the trip to their new ride searching her closely for weapons. The last woman he’d tried to kidnap had been full of unpleasant surprises. Other than some pepper spray in her purse, she had nothing dangerous.
Unless one counted those fingernails. Though those could be a weapon of passion, he supposed.
Some duct tape across her mouth completed her abduction. The van pulled into an alley and drove to where a second van awaited them. Switching everyone over to the new vehicle only took a moment.
They quickly doused the first van with gas and tossed in a time-delayed flare. Then they were on their way back the same direction they’d come.
He dropped his jacket in the back of the van and on top of her. That would keep anyone from recognizing it or seeing her. He slid a ball cap on and swapped his sunglasses for the mirrored kind. That changed his appearance enough to avoid issues.
The police were on the ball. It hadn’t been five minutes, but two men on foot were talking animatedly to several pedestrians. They all seemed to be using their hands to help describe him. Several were pointing in the direction the van had disappeared.
Nathan smiled and enjoyed the architecture as they drove through the city and toward their new accommodations. It was about time something had gone his way.
Chapter Nine
Kathleen stared at the smug little bastard. Queen was used to getting his way, to bullying people. It was time for him to learn a few hard truths.
“If you’d done your research into me or my ex-husband, you’d know we don’t just take abuse. We fight. I hate that bastard with every fiber of my being and I’d like nothing better than to throw him under the bus, but not under these conditions.
“And I won’t let you sit in my office like you own it, drinking my whisky, and thinking you have me over a barrel. Get out. And don’t come back without a warrant.”
