by Terry Mixon
* * * * *
Kathleen fumed as a private jet registered to an untraceable holding company raced toward Paris. They’d taken everything from her. Everything.
Yes, she still had money. The liquid funds, anyway. But they’d seized her companies. Frozen trillions of dollars of value. They wouldn’t get away with it. Of that, she swore.
Her legal team had already filed a blizzard of lawsuits and received an injunction from a friendly judge, but she knew that wouldn’t stop the government’s extralegal activity. Not now that Queen knew about the ship.
He wouldn’t allow the rule of law to stand in his way. Besides, she couldn’t even claim the damned thing. It was gone. She had to accept that.
That didn’t mean she had to take it, though. She placed a call to a memorized number.
“Joe’s Bar, Grill, and Machine Shop. Joe speaking.”
Kathleen imagined that was funny to him, though she had no idea why. She’d never met the man and wasn’t about to ask.
“I need to order takeout. The account is B-1054.”
“Sure. Send me a note and wire the payment. How soon do you want it?”
“As soon as possible. I’ll pay the premium for speedy delivery. Also, this has some rare ingredients. Look for the note.”
She hung up and brought up an anonymous email account.
Josh Queen, secretary of state. Chicago or Washington. As soon as possible. It doesn’t matter how. Twenty percent delivery surcharge if you deliver today. Ten percent for tomorrow.
She deleted the email, but didn’t purge the folder.
After a minute, her note vanished and another appeared in the folder.
Hot stuff. I’ll try to deliver today. The price is thirty million. Nonnegotiable.
It also had an account number.
The fee was exorbitantly high, but she had no choice. And he’d deliver or wire the money back. His reputation was very solid.
She deleted his note and left her acceptance. Then she logged into an offshore account and wired the money.
Josh Queen wasn’t going to be a problem much longer.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jess was just getting up from her nap and grabbing lunch when Ray Proudfoot called. She grabbed a sandwich and a drink, determined to be ready when they got to the destination in a few hours.
He wasn’t in the cargo room as she expected, but was with Doctor Crocket, his wife, and…his other wife? They were in a room packed with gear from the battle zone.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“This,” Ray said, holding up a tablet. “I had Michael look over the combat armor and found a camera. That told me that they were recording. Finding the data repository wasn’t hard.”
He gestured toward the helmet on the table. “We found a port and linked it up with one of our tablets through a cable we modified.”
“You have direct access to their data files?” Jess asked. “That’s a huge breakthrough! How did you even find the video? How did you play it?”
“We cheated,” Sierra said. “Emily took one of the helmets apart and tried possible wiring combinations until she hit one that seemed to give her no issues. Trial and error got the power levels right. We burned up a few helmets in the process, but omelets need eggs.”
“We’ll still be able to recover the data from them,” Doctor Crocket said. “Probably. We only fried the ports.”
Emily took the tablet. “The operating systems aren’t compatible, of course. I’m only using this as a dumb terminal, which required some work and some luck. The helmet is really in control. I installed version three of the translation software on the tablet and it’s making guesses as to what the text says.
“As for finding the video, that’s where we cheated. We turned on the camera and then went looking for recent files. The basic use of files and folders is intuitive. People want to be able to find things.”
“And once we located the file, we convinced the system to tell us what to play it with,” Ray said. “Again, this is all running on the helmet, which is not a very complex computer system.”
Jess shook her head. “Techogeek gobbledygook. You guys rock!”
“That’s not the part we called you down to see,” he continued. “Watch this. It’s not pretty, but it shows something you need to see.”
“Is it the fighting? I’ve seen people die. I’d rather not do so again, if I don’t have to.”
“There is some of that,” he admitted. “That’s not the astounding thing. Watch.”
Emily held out the tablet and tapped an icon. The screen changed to a video of a number of heavy-worlders standing in a group. As they were in armor, Jess suspected they were soldiers. They were talking. The language didn’t sound at all familiar.
One of the men shouted something and the guy with the helmet cam turned to face him. His armor was a little different. Maybe he was an officer.
He stood beside one of the small combat craft they’d found wrecked in the bay. He spoke to them for a few minutes and then held up a small tablet. He tapped on it and began walking away from the center of the formation.
The troops readied themselves, but she couldn’t tell why. They were facing a blank wall. It had arches similar to the ones in the bay, but no hatches she could see.
Then the wall inside the arch turned misty and little bolts of light shot through it. Moments later, it cleared and she could see a room on the other side. The cargo area on Freedom Express. A few men and women were standing there gawking, until the heavy-worlders rushed in and began firing.
The fight was as ugly and one-sided as she’d expected from the body count. They quickly slaughtered the unarmed crew.
Emily stopped the video. “We fast forwarded. They ran amok on the ship. This guy went to the core with a team. He recorded one of his friends knifing the woman we found there. Armed defenders finally pushed them back.
“This guy didn’t make it, obviously, but we saw some of the troops escape before the friendly forces shut down the arches. On tablets similar to the ones the bad guys used, by the way. They must have locked them down, because they didn’t seem worried about a second attack.”
“If they won, why didn’t they take their dead with them?” Jess asked. “And where did they go?”
Ray shrugged. “Damned if I know. The camera shut off shortly after that. Maybe they went through the arches after they blew the corridor. Whatever happened, the evidence suggests that they went through shortly after the attack.”
She struggled to understand what she’d seen. “I guess I’m clueless. Why did they blow the corridor if they locked the transport down? And what are those things? How can you just open up a link from one room to another that isn’t even on the same heavenly body?”
“It has to be something like a wormhole,” Ray said. “You’ve probably seen a number of TV shows using that trope. They all hit the same theme in slightly different ways. Bottom line, this is a technology that allows people to travel great distances without crossing the space between.”
She nodded. “That much is clear. We need to know how to operate these portals. I want the controls found.”
“Done,” Doctor Crocket said. He produced a small tablet with a flourish. “This particular unit was found in the jacket of one of the people killed in the attack. It matches the appearance of the one we saw in use.”
“I pulled the battery and replaced it with one of the ones we’ve been using for testing,” Emily said. “They’re rechargeable, by the way. The control came back to life and seems fairly straightforward.”
Jess took it. “Let’s take a look. Suits and armed guards. You did call Rex, right?”
Proudfoot nodded. “He’s already in the cargo area with his people. He said there wouldn’t be anyone coming for a visit without getting their faces shot off.”
The five of them suited up and made their way to the cargo bay. Rex had all the guards present, armed to the teeth and suited up.
He made his
way over to her. “We’ll set up behind the equipment. Do you really think this will work?”
“Damned if I know. If it does, this will be the biggest thing to ever happen to humanity.”
Once Rex was ready, she brought the control to life. It had three control icons. She touched the first and it took her to a screen with a numeric keypad. She’d been working on the alien language and recognized that much.
She backed out and visited the other screens. They were identical, so these were controls for all three arches. Presumably, the first one was on the left, based on their writing.
The keypad had spaces for twenty characters and a number of other icons. One was orange and looked like a knot. She suspected it was the lock for the arch in question.
Jess tapped the icon and an open string replaced the knot. Rather than typing in random numbers, she found the up arrow to check for history. Score one for intuition. A code filled the spaces.
“I’m about to hit enter on the last code someone used on the left arch, I think. Here we go!”
She hit the key and mist filled the arch. After a moment of lightning, it cleared to show a chamber on the other side.
One with several armed men in suits who raised their weapons to aim right at her.
* * * * *
Harry led his team down a long, curved corridor. The equipment along the bulkheads looked strange to him, but he wasn’t a spacer. Not really. The instruments they had along continued to sample the environment.
It was very, very cold, but nowhere close to absolute zero. More like North Pole in the winter cold. The atmosphere was bone dry, but would sustain life in a pinch. So long as they didn’t freeze to death.
They’d been moving slowly down the corridor for almost two hours. Part of him wanted to go faster, but as soon as he did, they’d find something unexpected and fatal. Better to be slow the first time.
They’d brought chalk to mark the walls. They’d know what was safe next time.
The corridor they’d been exploring and photographing was coming to an end. He could see a large, closed hatch ahead of them. It seemed as solid as a bank vault.
He considered turning back without opening it, but knew that risked mutiny. After the slow pace, his people wanted to see what was on the other side. So did he.
“There’s a touchpad beside the hatch,” Sandra said. “Only one button. Shall we ring for service?”
“Get ready, everyone.”
He raised his rifle, but the hatch slid ponderously aside without any slavering monsters on the other side. A vast chamber lay before him. One that didn’t make much sense from where he was standing. He could see something on the distant ceiling.
Harry walked over to the hatch and looked inside. There was a platform for them to step onto, so he used it.
Once he was out, the world seemed to reorient itself. He was now standing in what looked like a gigantic tube. It dropped away beneath him and rose far above his head. The platform had a gently curved walkway that led to the wall of the tube.
There were buildings all around him. They seemed to rise from the walls of the tube and point inward.
“Hey, I get it,” Sandra said. “Watch this.”
She stepped onto the walkway and moved forward until she was standing at right angles to the rest of the team. “This thing is rotating, right? Well, I bet that if I toss something I’ll see the Coriolis Effect. We’re in a giant rotating tube. I could walk around until I was looking down at you from up there.”
Harry shook his head and moved out to join her. Once he did so, everything snapped into place in his mind. She was exactly right.
“This is a massive city in space,” he said. “A huge colony like my father wanted to build. These people beat him to it and went big. I wonder how far across it is.”
One of the men brought up his weapon and triggered the laser rangefinder. “It’s more than a kilometer away. Call it 1,300 meters.”
They’d never have been able to see the other side of the tube without some kind of lighting. He wasn’t sure where it was coming from. There wasn’t much. It seemed like twilight.
“I’m not seeing any signs of battle damage. If there was fighting, they didn’t blow anything up or set it on fire. There’s no telling what or where this thing is located.”
“Maybe we should look out the window,” Sandra said.
He looked in the direction she was facing. About a quarter turn around the tube and a few hundred meters to the right was a dark rectangle.
“If we go, we’ll blow the timetable for our return.”
“Only if we walk back like grandpa with his walker,” she retorted.
Everyone laughed.
“I suppose we could pick up the pace,” he admitted. “At least on the way out. Okay, let’s go over there and take a quick look.”
They walked through the abandoned buildings cautiously, treating it like a surreal version of moving around in Iraq. Every dark window could have housed a sniper. Every bit of refuse might have concealed a bomb.
Of course, nothing happened. They made it to the window in about twenty minutes.
The transparent plate had a railing to keep people from walking right across, but the presence of gates told him that it was possible. Looking down, he could see nothing but stars. Then he saw the shadow of something dark.
“I wonder why they have these big windows without something interesting to look at.” Sandra said.
“There is something,” he said after a moment. “You almost can’t see it in the dark, but it’s there. Look at the line of stars.”
The heavens were full of stars, but there was a line where they stopped slowly rotating into view. More like an arc, really.
“I see it,” she said. “Is that a planet? It’s about the same size Earth was when Liberty Station was in orbit.”
Harry thought she might be correct. If so, there were no lights on the planet’s surface. Not one. And it was darker than even Earth was from orbit at night. It was as though there were no sun at all.
“We need to head back,” he said as soon as the planet, or whatever it was, rotated out of sight.
His radio came to life. “Liberty Six, Mars Base.”
“Go Mars,” he said. Someone had to have come through the quantum tunnel to call him.
“You need to return ASAP. Events have taken a turn for the worse on Earth and for the better up here.”
“Way to be obscure,” he said. “We’re on our way. And you can count our excursion as a turn for the strange.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nathan threw himself to the side and landed hard. The small creatures calling to one another in the dark behind him were the only noises he heard. No gunshots. Nothing.
He cautiously raised himself off the ground and waved a handy stick around the corner. Still nothing.
After a moment’s consideration, he called for one of his men to come up and look inside. The man agreeably wandered into the room and gasped when he saw the weapon. It didn’t fire as he hurriedly backed out.
“Are you trying to get me killed?” the man snarled.
“Of course not,” Nathan said indignantly. “It doesn’t work, obviously. I was going to have you assist me in further exploration, but if you’re frightened, I’ll send you back to Paris to wait for my mother.”
The man didn’t seem convinced by Nathan’s lies. He was smarter than he looked.
“What is this place?”
“An old WWII bunker one of my mother’s associates upgraded. She heard about it and some of the things he once kept here after he died.”
“I think I will go back to Paris. Shall I send more of the men out to help you…search?”
There were three others back at the base in Paris. “Keep one man to watch the prisoner when you go get my mother. Send the other two to help me here. Bring her as soon as you pick her up. I left the data at the hideout. She has the codes for it. And send the rest of our searchers up here to join me befor
e you leave.”
The rest of his on-site team came in to join him after a few minutes. He gestured toward the elevator. “We’ll go down, if it’s working. If not, we’ll force it open and rappel down.”
They had no real way to search for booby traps, and Nathan wasn’t sure there were any. After all, if the weapons didn’t work, how dangerous would they make the rest of the place?
Nathan pressed the call button and the elevator doors slid open. It was large enough for all of them, so they piled in. The buttons had the alien script on them, but there were only six. On the theory that the good shit was at the bottom, he pressed the one he thought corresponded with the lowest floor.
The doors slid shut and it started down. He’d guessed right. It went down the correct number of floors and the doors slid back open.
“What kind of writing is this?” one of the men asked.
“Code,” Nathan said blithely. “The bugger who built it loved putting things in code.”
If he found what he hoped, he’d have to tell them some version of the truth very soon. Or kill them.
The lowest level of the base was a wide, open area. A vehicle park. One filled with what looked like combat aircraft and transports. Ones unlike any he’d ever seen before.
Their wings were short and stubby, swept sharply back. They had racks for missiles and the snouts of guns. They looked exceedingly dangerous. Too bad he wasn’t a pilot.
“Nice,” one of the men said as they spread out to cover the room with their weapons. “I wonder how they get out.”
That was certainly a valid question. They were far too large to go up the elevator, even if the entrance could have allowed them to take off. Yet the room seemed devoid of other exits.
The area around the elevator showed that they had stairs on the interior levels. They just didn’t go up to the entrance. That made some sense tactically.
