Eclipse (Bright Horizons Book 2)

by Wilson Harp

  “That might explain it, but the Hedali were surprised that we didn’t have any mosar at all in our solar system even though there were life forms. I suspect that we will find that in most solar systems, mosar exists even if there isn’t any life. There is something particular about this system. I just have no idea what that could be.”

  Williams walked behind the partition and started to take off his clothes.

  “I would be interested to see if the non-living materials on Mars are seeing an introduction of mosar because the Pelod have been living there,” Williams said.

  “That is a good idea. I’ll make a call or two tomorrow and see if we can get some localized readings. If it is, then we can look at the radius of infection and see if we can determine how far mosar can spread from its source,” Loudon said as she worked on the control console.

  “This floor really is cold,” Williams said as he stood naked behind the partition. He had always tried to ignore the discomfort that those who were tested must have felt to be unclothed in a strange lab behind a white sheet. But now that he was experiencing it, he knew it would be hard not to empathize with his subjects in the future.

  “Looks like we are ready, Doctor,” Loudon said.

  The light turned green and Williams stepped up on the scanner. He knew that it was just his imagination, but could feel the waves that would send the data back to the sensors.

  “I hate to say it, Doctor, but I think we may have to try this again,” Loudon said. “I think I messed this up somehow. It wasn’t calibrated correctly.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s just gone haywire. I’m shutting it down, go ahead and step out.”

  Williams stepped out of the scanner and looked over at her. “What was going haywire?”

  “The scanner was saying there were over nine hundred parts per million. I must have hit something.”

  Williams shrugged. Nine hundred parts would be close to ten times what Swanson was suspected of having. He had never seen the scanner do that before, but maybe Loudon had pressed something wrong.

  “We are setting up again. Should be green soon,” Loudon said.

  Williams shuffled his feet against the cold floor as he waited for the light to turn green. He had never seen the scanner give a false reading before, but he figured that had to be the case. Loudon had been in contact with everyone he had since this project started.

  The light turned green and he stepped into the scanner.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor,” Loudon said. “I don’t know what I have done to this thing.”

  Williams felt his stomach sink. “Just let the test run through completely, then do a reset and we’ll do it again.”

  “Okay. Do you want to do the reset?”

  “I’ll come over and make sure everything is set up.”

  The seconds stretched out for Williams. He had a bad feeling that the scanner wasn’t wrong, but he didn’t want to jump to conclusions.

  The light turned red and he stepped off of the platform and threw on enough clothes to be modest. He then went to where Loudon waited by the terminal.

  Williams watched as Loudon reset the scanner.

  “That’s right,” he said as they watched the system ready itself. “Everything looks good, I’ll go back in.”

  He walked back behind the partition and stripped down again. He stepped up on the platform and waited for Loudon to say something.

  “Doctor,” she said. “It’s still showing the incredibly high readings.”

  “It’s right, Loudon,” Williams said.

  “How is that possible? We have been exposed to essentially the same number of infected people.”

  “I don’t know,” Williams said. “Maybe I was already infected before the project started.”

  The light turned red and he stepped back out.

  “Did you know Swanson before this?” Loudon asked.

  “No. No contact. The only thing we would have had in common was what all of the members of Earth force had in common during the war. None of the other combatants during the war that we have tested had near the levels that he did. Or I do.”

  “Maybe there is a genetic issue that allows you to receive more mosar than others,” Loudon suggested.

  “That’s a possibility. I think it must be environmental, still. But we can start looking at the genetics side of it. In the meantime, I am to be sequestered away from everyone who has not already had regular contact with me.”

  “Do you think… I mean, do you think my levels, for example, will remain steady even as heavily infected as you are?”

  Williams shook his head. “I don’t know. I think so. Let’s scan you every day and if you show signs of increased infection, I’ll secure myself away. If need be, I can work remotely.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that, Doctor,” Loudon said as Williams stepped out from behind the privacy partition.

  He smiled at her. “Why, that was a nice gesture of warmth and camaraderie, Doctor Loudon.”

  “Not at all,” she growled at him. “I just meant that if we had to sequester the lead of the project, then we would probably have a pandemic on our hands.”

  Williams dropped into his chair and pulled up some data files on his system. “Let’s see what we missed in Swanson’s records.”

  “What are we looking for?” asked Loudon as she pulled up the files on Swanson.

  “Anything that might connect him and me,” Williams said.

  Williams started with Swanson’s background records. Swanson’s mother had diabetes. So did William’s mother. He had started compiling a list of similarities like that when Loudon spoke.

  “Doctor, did you know Swanson was at Do’yar’on?”

  “Yeah,” said Williams. “I read that.”

  “That is quite a similarity, isn’t it?”

  Williams looked back at her. “What do you mean? I’ve never been to the system.”

  “If he survived the attack on board the Hemingway…” Loudon left the sentence hanging.

  Williams shrugged. “I was never on the Hemingway.”

  “You were on the Fitzgerald just a few weeks later,” Loudon said. She was shaking her head at Williams as if he were doing something incredibly stupid.

  He jumped to his feet when he realized how stupid he was. “We both survived an attack by the Iltia’cor gravitational weapon.”

  “There you go,” she said, waving her hand at him dismissively.

  Williams jumped back in his seat and pulled up the list of men and women who served on the Hemingway at Do’yar’on. There were twenty-seven who survived the engagement. Of those six had died since then.

  Three of the twenty-one lived in the DC area.

  “Loudon, let’s pull these three in for scanning tomorrow,” Williams said.

  “Tomorrow is Saturday, Williams. No one will be here.”

  “I will. I’d call them in tonight if I could.”

  “You seem really sure that this is the key,” Loudon said.

  “I am.”

  “I don’t want to seem overly skeptical, but it doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  Williams swung his chair around to face her.

  “This is the answer to why mosar spreads from person to person. Gravitation. It isn’t radiated in any way we could describe, and it isn’t a biological agent that spreads by finding a host. It’s a particle that transfers from one set of molecular binding to another when the new molecular binding is weaker in specific gravity. The ironic thing is that the introduction of mosar itself creates a weakness in the specific gravity of the matter that it infects.”

  “So it’s easier for someone who has mosar to be infected by more mosar?” Loudon asked.

  “In theory.”

  Loudon shook her head. “What theory?”

  “The one we are working on,” Williams said. He turned back to his screen and started pulling up some gravitational charts.

  “This theory isn’t more than a single point o
f datum that you have woven a lace of conjecture around.”

  “That’s right, Loudon. Now are you going to be in the lab when I pull our three contestants in?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it, Williams,” Loudon said with a smirk. “Because if you are wrong, you will have to buy the coffee supplies for the rest of the year. And if you are right, my name goes next to yours in the history books.”

  “If I’m wrong, I deserve to pay for the coffee. But if I’m right, then we have a chance to stop this before it spreads.”

  “Hey Williams, there is a fourth person in the D.C. area that will need to be tested, isn’t there?”

  Williams turned to look at Loudon. “Who?”

  “Ambassador Martin. Wasn’t he on the Fitzgerald with you?”

  Williams nodded soberly. “Yeah. You’re right. I’ll call Martin myself tomorrow morning. We need to get Ramirez, too.”

  Chapter 12

  “The supply ship should be here within the hour, Gunny. Are you sure that this is the right time?” Curtis asked.

  Alex looked over at room where the two Pelod were resting.

  “They don’t have much time, Captain. If we don’t move soon, they won’t survive.”

  “You really think they can recover at this point?” Curtis asked. “I mean, they seem in real bad shape.”

  “I agree, and that’s why I think we need to get them out of here as soon as we can.”

  Curtis shook his head. “Gunny…” he sighed. “You know that the aliens are not a priority. If it comes down to it… they just aren’t our problem.”

  “Captain, the supply ship is large enough for all of us to board. This shouldn’t even be a discussion,” Alex replied.

  “I just think it might be wiser if we could be sure how many Otina are with the supply ship. You got a look at two of them, what would it hurt to wait another eight days?”

  “Captain, we have been over this, haven’t we? There are twelve Otina permanently stationed here. On both of the supply ships, I observed four Otina unload supplies and bring them into the compound. Two others were seen on the ship. Now, I agree that there could be more, but if we take out the twelve in the compound just as the ship is landing we can jump the four bringing in supplies and make a run for the ship. If we wrest control of the ship, we can all escape.”

  Curtis nodded as Alex recounted the plan that they had all agreed to.

  Alex pulled in even closer to Curtis. “Are you losing your nerve?”

  Curtis glared at the Gunnery Sergeant, but Alex continued. “It happens. I’ve seen it plenty. Don’t worry about it and don’t beat yourself up. Just remember your training and everything will be okay.”

  Curtis nodded. Alex knew the captain was a good officer; he had just never seen an actual firefight. He joined the U.S. Army after the Iltia’cor invasion, but he never put his boots on the ground where there was any action.

  Plenty of men who turned out to be good solid troopers got scared before they went into their first action. Alex knew that even the toughest got scared no matter how often they had seen combat. The secret was to lie to yourself and let the fear wash over you without it affecting you. Much easier to describe than to achieve, but once you knew how to do it, you could at least focus on the mission once again.

  “Okay, Gunny. You are right, let’s get that supply ship and get out of here,” Curtis said. He sighed and looked surprised. “You know, you are right. Now that I’ve made the decision, I feel calmer. I can trust the training and the men.”

  “Good, Captain. Let’s go tell the rest.”

  Alex and Curtis walked over to the group of humans standing and sitting on the far side of the common room in the holding area.

  Alex noticed that Manny was again missing from the room. Even in the six weeks that they had been held in the Otina base, Manny had still not found acceptance from the other humans. Alex understood. It had taken him some time to not hold all Iltia’cor responsible for what their people did, and tried to do, to Earth.

  Manny took it well. He even said he understood their reaction, but it irritated Alex. There were plenty of humans that were friendly and open with Manny, and Alex had hoped he would find at least one of the other humans that he could be friends with while they were stuck here. But that didn’t appear to be happening.

  Both of the Pelod were too weak to even stand on their own for long, and Manny felt that they shouldn’t be alone. While they did not engage the humans in too much conversation, they took some form of solace in Manny being with them.

  Alex shook his head as he thought of that. Maybe humans were just too new and alien for the other races to feel comfortable with.

  “Adams, how long before the next patrol?” Curtis asked as he and Alex approached the other humans.

  “Nine minutes, eighteen seconds,” Adams answered.

  “And how long before the next transport?”

  “Around thirty-three minutes, if they keep to the schedule.”

  Curtis nodded. “I’m giving the green light to this operation. Hopefully within an hour we will have control of the Otina supply ship and will be heading out of here. Are there any questions?”

  “What are we going to do about the aliens?” Singh asked.

  Liao nodded as he cut his eyes toward the room where Manny and the Pelod were.

  “We will take them with us. They are prisoners, the same as us and we will get them on the supply ship,” Curtis answered.

  Liao said something in Chinese. Alex was sure it was at best just a complaint.

  “That’s the way it is,” Curtis said as he locked eyes with the Chinese soldier.

  Liao nodded and Curtis continued.

  “We will try to send a distress call from this location before we leave. If there are any Earth forces near us, they should pick it up and start heading our way. Otherwise, we will need to determine our location and head toward the closest friendly port.”

  Curtis looked at Alex. “All yours, Gunny.”

  “I’ll be right in, Captain,” Alex said. He turned toward the room that the aliens were in and walked through the doorway.

  “Hi, Alex,” Manny said as the marine entered.

  “Hi, Manny.”

  Davison was lying on the bed and Levin was sitting up against the wall. Both of the Pelod had their eyes closed and Manny had a troubled look on his face.

  “How are they?” Alex asked.

  “Not good,” Manny said. He sighed and then looked at Davison. “He seems to be in the worst situation. He hasn’t spoken in quite a while. He sleeps more than he is awake anymore.”

  “We are starting,” Alex said. “If everything goes well, we will have a ship and be out of here soon.”

  Manny broke into a big smile. “That’s great news, Alex. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I don’t think so, Manny. You just stay here and take care of them. We will likely need your help getting them onto the ship.”

  Manny nodded and Alex turned to leave. Hopkins was watching from the door.

  “We are ready for you, Gunny,” he said.

  Alex clapped him on the shoulder as he walked by him.

  “Ready to see more of this base?” he asked Hopkins.

  “Definitely,” Hopkins said. “I’ve been here for seven weeks. These glowing walls have lost their appeal.”

  Alex went into the room where the access tunnel was. Curtis and Adams waited for him.

  “Patrol should pass in three minutes. You’ll be able to leave the storage room as soon as you get there,” Adams said.

  “Good luck, Gunny,” Curtis said as he helped Alex into the crawl space. “We’ll be waiting by the front door.”

  Alex lowered himself into the now familiar tunnel. This was his sixty-third crawl through in the last four weeks. He hoped it would be his last.

  He reached the end of the narrow passageway and removed the panel into the storage room. Twice he had almost been caught in the room, but the combination of the Otina’s o
bsessive scheduling combined with Adams’ ability to keep perfect time in his head had kept Alex from being seen during these recon missions.

  Alex listened at the door that led into the hallway. He knew that the patrol had passed several minutes before, but he never missed a chance to reduce risk on a mission. The door slid open into the empty hallway and Alex quickly and quietly walked to the main door of the holding area.

  The other humans were waiting near the entrance. As soon as Alex punched in the override code on the door’s control panel, the energy field dissipated and the waiting men hurried out. It took twenty seconds before the field reset, but no one wanted to risk being in the doorway when it did.

  Grieg led half of the men down the passage to the right. He would lead the assault on the control room.

  Alex led the others down the left passage and waited around the corner of the barracks. When Grieg attacked the control room they expected an alarm to be raised. When that happened, Alex and his team would go into the barracks and kill any Otina they found. It was hoped that the Otina would be surprised and the humans could get weapons in a fast assault.

  The seconds seemed to stretch forever as Alex waited for the any sign that Grieg had started his assault. The flashing of a blue light and the sound of the Otina in their barracks scrambling about set Alex’s feet to motion. He heard several of the other humans follow close behind him.

  Alex rounded the corner toward the barracks and saw six Otina in the room. Four were running toward the door on the opposite side of the room, while two were still gathering their weapons.

  Alex dove at the nearest and tackled him. He grabbed the arm of the Otina and pushed it backwards until he heard and felt a snap. He then grabbed the weapon that had fallen from the alien’s grasp.

  The high, shrill sound of the Otina shrieking in pain caused the other four aliens to come running back into the room.

  Alex lifted his new won weapon and fired it at the far doorway. Two of the Otina were hit with the blasts from the energy weapon he held. The other two aliens started firing back at him. Alex scrambled to his feet and ran back to the doorway where he could find better cover.