An Eagle's Revenge (Across the Infinite Void Book 2)

by Ashley Grapes

  The stock and real-estate markets had officially crashed, and hundreds of thousands of people were being victimized by hackers and identity thefts. Schools were closing around the globe, hospitals and jails were full to capacity, and businesses were fighting for revenue to keep afloat. The government was strained beyond measure, and after their use of martial law, they were grossly untrusted by the public.

  Traffic became thick going through Oklahoma City and slowed down to a molasses crawl as they approached Albuquerque. More and more people had the idea of going to Ohmani, which had stayed largely unaffected by the storm due to being inside of an asteroid. He could understand everyone’s panicked state of mind after listening to the radio, where conspiracy theories and predictions were more commonplace than actual news or science.

  Tensions were straining between the United States and several non-allies, but it was North Korea that was causing the most concern. As soon as the word nuclear attack was uttered, people freaked. Whether or not it was true, the media reported several nations were preparing for defense by readying their own weapons of mass destruction. The world was in a nuclear stand-off. Levi knew they had to get out of there, and fast.

  Their nine hour drive almost doubled. When they started snaking through the city streets, Levi noticed a lot of people on the side of the road begging for money, advocating for religion, and desperate for jobs…at least that’s what he could gather from the signs they gripped to their chests. The visuals of desperation were dichotomous with the rock music being blasted through the van’s speakers. Sherman was stubbornly trying to preserve the intimately exciting vibe of a buddy road trip, but no amount of rituals in music, games, and conversations could make them forget about the world outside their trusty steed.

  They finally reached the Ohmani State Embassy. The building’s three-story glass was cut into narrow strips of alternating black and grey, and the front curved ever so slightly into one gentle undulation. Parking rules apparently did not apply any longer, and so they pulled their van underneath a tree a few blocks away.

  “That’s a long line,” Peanut said, looking over their heads at the sea of cars.

  It was an even longer wait. They slid in line mid-morning and didn’t talk to a person in the Consular Section until almost closing at six. Peanut, Fletch, and Sherman had their biometric readings redone, which included hand recognition, face recognition, and a retinal scan. Thanks to the digital age of information, their temporary passports were approved and the woman explained they could be expedited for pick-up in the next two weeks.

  “But our return flight leaves in eleven days,” Sherman explained.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry but there’s nothing I can do. It’s not like the old days when all they had to do is print them. The microchips are custom made. I will tell you that they’re usually here much sooner than the window allows for…hopefully that remains true with our high volume of customers. Mail or pick-up?”

  “Pick-up.”

  “You will receive an automated email when it has arrived.”

  “What are we going to do if our passports don’t arrive?”

  “Then you will have to book another flight but,” she winced, “right now we’re all booked for the next six months.”

  “Six months!?”

  “Yes, and it was five months as of this morning. I would go ahead and book another flight if I were you…just in case. If your passports arrive in time for your return flight, just call and cancel for a full refund.”

  Levi gave the woman his card, despite the protests from his friends. “Sherman, we will worry about it if the time comes. For right now, I’m just fronting the money. Shall we grab a room in the nearest hotel?”

  Finding one would prove difficult, and Levi had to pull a Bockie and bribe the front desk manager to get them into a room.

  “Are you sure you want to spend that much? We could just buy a tent and camp like those people,” Fletch motioned outside.

  “What’s the point of making money if I don’t spend it,” he shrugged nonchalantly. In all actuality he didn’t feel it safe on the streets with Fletch and Peanut in their group, especially after what they had experienced in Oklahoma. Squeezing four men into a small hotel room was the least of their worries.

  “I’ll sleep on the floor,” Peanut offered after they threw their bags down on the beds.

  The sound of popping drew them to the window. Levi peered down from the cocoon of their hideaway to see a mob of desperate bystanders scattering like dried leaves in an autumn storm. A growing circle of black asphalt began to emerge around an unshaven and unkempt man. He held an automatic weapon, firing rounds of ammunition into the sky. The ratcheting pops overpowered his shouts and drowned the whines of the approaching police vehicles. They descended upon him and crouched behind the shields of opened car doors. There was no warning as the madman was put down like a rabid dog.

  Over the next week, matters only became worse. Levi had never seen anything like it. The fabric of sanity and society were tearing at the seams and appeared to be in inexorable decline. He watched the hundreds of people living in tents on every patch of grass the eye could see, desperate to emigrate from the emerging dystopia. Most of them probably had houses somewhere with pools, granite countertops and neighborhood watches. Perspective could be enlightening.

  Levi reflected on what was happening around him. Change was the one inevitable truth. Before now, nothing had prevented the world from spinning like a well-oiled machine, albeit one of enormous complexity and interdependencies. Somehow the machine had been endlessly greased, with its wheels turning faster at an exponential rate as everyone tried desperately to work together while trying to balance different idealisms and realisms. The political, economic, ethical, technological and spiritual inner workings were more intricate and vulnerable than anyone had conceived. Additionally, millions of years evolution had seeded strong instincts for distrust, fear and negativity biases; and in the end it had all been too much. The solar storm had caused the machine to stop for only an instant, but the latent instability took over, and everyone that depended on the spinning machine went flying off from the sudden jolt.

  Over the next few days, the numbers of hopefuls trying to evacuate grew, as did the number of violent incidences. The desperation was palatable, but Levi wondered if he was falling victim to the broad brushes of the media and not reality itself. Levi had seen plenty of science fiction where the tinderbox of modern civilization had gone into flame. This wasn’t science fiction, and he had to remember not to fall victim to over generalizations and falsified hyperbole.

  On the tenth day, the day before their flight, their passports had still not arrived. Sherman was rubbing his face in sheer panic.

  “What are we going to do? Our flight leaves tomorrow!”

  “I’m going to try and call Mantys. Maybe he can fast-track us back,” he suggested. They couldn’t stay for another six months. Even making food runs was becoming dangerous.

  “Fire,” Peanut grumbled, pointing from the window.

  Smoke billowed hundreds of feet into the air in dark masses and the sky was invaded with curling ash. Soon the smell of burnt plastic and scorched paint seeped into their hotel room and Levi could see fire licking above a building not too far away.

  “That’s the embassy,” Fletch said with an eerie calmness.

  They watched in silence as their chance of leaving the ground for the foreseeable future was eaten away by the fires of panic. Or was it anger? How could one feel trapped when there was an entire world beneath their feet?

  “That’s it!” Sherman stomped to his suitcase and pulled out his gun. Nini doesn’t play.”

  Levi gave Sherman a look that begged for elaboration. “Nini?”

  “My great great grandmother Nini Pilvalosi was the last la madrina of the Carmani Organizzata.”

  “Your grandmother was a mob boss?!”

  “After my grandaddy was arrested she took over until he was released a f
ew years later. Only woman to have ever united the families, although it didn’t last long. This was hers,” he held up the shiny Colt.

  “Sherman, you’re not going to go shoot anybody, are you?” Levi asked. As of late, he was truly worried about their manager’s sanity.

  Sherman grunted a laugh. “We are family, and lucky for you, I come from a long line of gangsters. No one is going to touch us. We are going to go out that door and—”

  Sherman was interrupted by the ringing of the hotel phone. Levi assumed it was the hotel finally kicking everybody out.

  “Hello?”

  “Levi.”

  Her voice was unmistakable and Levi was surprised to feel his eyes welling with relief. “Talon.”

  “I can’t talk long, but I need you to listen to me. This is important and will save your life.”

  “O…okay.” The franticness in her voice snapped him into serious mode.

  “Do you have something to write with? I’m going to give you some coordinates. Drive there, now,” she emphasized. “A ship will be waiting for you to take you back to Ohmani.”

  “Talon, what’s going on? Do you know something?”

  “Yes. I can’t talk about it over the phone, okay? But you need to leave right now. The coordinates are 32°16'29.5"N 105°01'40.4"W. Promise me you’ll be there.”

  “I’ll be there. Are you okay?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too. Tal—” She hung up. Everybody was looking at him, waiting to know what was said. It was probably good his friends were there or he may have embarrassed himself. Nothing quenched raw emotion like being around a bunch of guys. “She wants us to drive to these coordinates.”

  “She works for the government?” Peanut asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Something’s going down,” Sherman predicted. “What if we go and she’s not there?”

  “What other choice do we have?” Fletch reasoned.

  “We go.” Peanut said.

  “Here’s to another road trip.”

  16 THINK LIKE A TERRORIST

  “What if I need to talk to you? Can’t you put a wire in my ear or something?”

  Talon trained Kierra on how to work the bionic contacts. Her high school friend’s eyes were hazel, and the wiring blended in well with the spattered brown in her eyes.

  “I don’t have a wire. Just keep the recording feature on and I will be able to see everything from my laptop.”

  “What if I have to pee or pick my nose or something?”

  “Close your eyes…especially if you put a booger in your mouth. I may look at you different after that.”

  Talon sat cross-legged on the floor, hugging the far end of the bed in case there was an unwelcome visitor. She watched on the screen as Kierra paced down the ship’s main corridor. She was given an itinerary for the day, and her first meeting was in a conference room at nine. The meeting space was filled with people, many in lab coats. She always thought wearing a lab coat outside of a lab was just pretentious, but it did the job of making Aberdeen and Kelly look more official. All in all there were two pilots, Aberdeen and Kelly, Kierra and Dr. Phillips, and six others representing the astrophysics, astrochemistry, and astrogeology labs. It appeared that Kelly would be leading the meeting. How much would he tell them, she wondered?

  “Hello, my name is Dr. Therron Pransa, and I am here with Dr. Jean from the DSO. In approximately three and-a-half hours, we will enter a wormhole created by the military ship that is escorting us to the Bravon system, B-58167. We will be cloaked from the moment we enter the wormhole until the moment we leave. Many of you must be wondering why we have asked you on this mission to study the celestial bodies in the Bravon system. I cannot disclose everything, but I can tell you that the DSO has gathered intelligence that there may be an intelligent alien species somewhere in this system.”

  Several people in the room gasped.

  “But we haven’t found another planet with intelligent life since Earth,” a Ryley woman said. Kierra looked down at her paper and wrote Dr. Kreesa.

  “That’s right.”

  “What intelligence? Who discovered it?”

  “I cannot disclose that information, but I can say it was our Ohmani-satellite office that can be credited with this discovery.”

  Talon’s blood pressure rose. She knew they had to lie, but the DOLO was sending them deep into the void to face potential danger. The least they could have done is given them a choice. Talon may have been guilty of using people lately, but she never risked lives.

  “This information you can’t tell us anything about,” Dr. Kreesa rolled her eyes, “couldn’t have been some sort of radio signal or other cosmic dial tone or we wouldn’t be here.”

  Pissed she’s been taken away from research, Kierra scribed.

  Dr. Phillips simply nodded at Dr. Kreesa.

  “Will we make contact if it turns out to be true?” Another man asked. He looked like the ultimate nerd, sporting thick glasses and a face he never had to shave due to the inability to grow facial hair.

  Dr. Spruce

  “Absolutely not. The purpose here is confirmation. Once we have that we will go back and the DSO will move forward with this using very strict protocols.”

  “Well, none of us have found anything so far so you all must be pretty confident if your spending this much money for a confirmation,” another female sporting a lab coat spoke up. “We told them we could visualize the system better in about a month when it’s in a different rotation. Why the hurry?”

  Dr. Paul, Planetary Geophysicist, Kierra wrote on her paper. Talon had the feeling the scientists could probably sense the withholding of information from their new NASA visitors, and that was enough to make anyone uncomfortable – especially in unmapped territory where they wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone.

  “We have funding for situations such as this, and we’ve accumulated quite a bit since, as everyone already knows, this is the first time we’ve had hints of intelligent life on another planet since discovering Earth. This vessel is equipped with state of the art technologies and you all are the best experts in your fields. I don’t know how much collaboration your labs usually participate in, but this is now a team effort.”

  “What’s our course so we can plan our research?” Dr. Paul asked.

  Talon looked forward to watching Kelly attempt to fake a PhD, but then he simply said, “Dr. Phillip.”

  Kierra’s advisor stood up and Kierra drew an angry face on her paper. When she looked up, Dr. Phillips was looking directly at her from across the room in a way that even made Talon feel nervous from behind a computer screen. The fact that Dr. Phillips was a part of leading their briefing made Talon believe he knew more than the others. Someone had to talk about the science…

  “If you are new to this vessel please familiarize yourselves with it and your respective labs before we reach the solar system in approximately twenty-eight hours.” He looked down at his laptop and a hologram of the solar system appeared above the strip fitted in the lacquered table. He continued to show their ten day course into the system and then back out, and dismissed everyone to join their respective teams.

  “I’m sorry, Kierra,” Dr. Phillips said, putting a hand on her shoulder when they were alone in their new lab.

  “Can we just concentrate on the work, please?”

  “Yes,” he said, but just couldn’t help but add, “I really did invite you because I think you’re going to be an incredible scientist.”

  “I think so too.”

  Talon jabbed the air. “That’s right! Back up, perv!”

  As if Dr. Phillips could hear Talon shout, he got down to business. Her advisor introduced Kierra to the lab and the two worked out a game plan that would maximize their time. Talon had to admit she didn’t understand a lot of what they were saying but Kierra seemed confident in her role.

  After lunch, she and the rest of the crew had been invited, per their itinerary, to a room that pro
jected the universe in front of the ship. Talon could feel the tension amongst the crew as they laid eyes for the first time on the military escort that traveled ahead of them. Compared to Cousteau, the convoy ship was gargantuan in size, and could very well have thousands of people on board. Somehow its presence solidified the reality of their situation – they were going dark into uncharted territory and that beast of a ship was there for their protection.

  The crew watched as a small spherical craft dipped from the underbelly of the military’s ship and zoomed into the void. A few minutes later, they witnessed the birth of the wormhole. It floated in front of them like a hypnotic egg, begging them to discover the life it held within its depths. Cousteau moved forward and followed the conduit of harnessed exotic matter. Soon after, the daunting military ship began to disappear, beginning with the front of the ship and working backwards like it was being swallowed by an invisible beast. An unfamiliar droning hum washed over their own vessel as the cloaking device was activated.

  “This is so incredible. Are you seeing this?” Kierra said out loud. She got several weird looks from the other adults in the room and she cleared her throat out of embarrassment.

  Most of the crew already knew each other, and Talon had noticed several judgmental looks directed at her friend, especially from the other female scientists. Whether or not Kierra noticed them she did not know, but a graduate student did seem out of place amongst the elite group – not to mention this particular graduate student was incredibly beautiful and many years their junior.

  The team had the rest of the day off, except for their scheduled dinner. Talon watched in case anything important was said, but much of their conversation revolved around food. People always loved to talk about food, Talon noticed, and it was making her mouth water. Kierra brought a half-filled plate back to the room along with some snacks she snagged from the kitchen area. While Talon scarfed the sad excuse for a decent meal down, the girls talked about anything but the mission – their men, Talon’s wedding, and even the Sacred Union. It felt like a night young girlfriends were supposed to have when they weren’t preoccupied with saving Earth or discovering terrorist hideouts.