Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven

by Dennis Chamberland

  “Cut it out, Dale,” Warren whispered sharply. “What are you gonna do, call the Muskogee County Sheriff when this guy slits our throats over a can of beans?”

  Wattenbarger looked surprised, then replied in a low voice, “Good point. Guess I forgot where we are.” His eyes began to shift back and forth across the footprints. “Now what do we do, Lew?” he asked.

  “Well, if we can see his prints, then he can see ours,” Warren said as their wide eyes began to sweep along their own dual path of clearly marked prints in the ash. “It’s like we leave a roadmap every time we come here – right back to the cave.”

  “Crap!” Wattenbarger exclaimed in a hiss.

  “Well, it’s not really that bad, actually,” Warren said. “The ash doesn’t start until that line over there,” he said pointing to the limit of the burnt ground. “Beyond that to the cave, it may be more difficult to track us back. But we have a bad habit of taking the same trail back to the cave and up the ridge every time. The tornado wiped most of that away, but we’re back to our old habits, and we need to change our ways.”

  “Do you think anyone could follow it back?”

  “It’d be damn hard in the dark, but a good tracker with enough light might be able to follow.”

  “Can we cover it?” Wattenbarger persisted.

  “No. But we can leave so many trails that I’ll look like there’re many of us. We can confuse him and lead him in the wrong direction. But, if we intend to make it to the observatory, we have no choice but to leave our clear mark on every trip out and back. If he’s got an IQ above a blue tick hound, he’ll figure it out and could wait for us on our way back or tag us on our way out.”

  “Then we just can’t do it?” Wattenbarger asked.

  Warren ’s eyes closed as he thought. “Well, here are the possibilities as I see them. One: he only walked this way once to investigate the fire. The orange glow must’ve been easily visible from Tulsa to Muskogee . He may have walked miles to get here and miles to get back. If it’s all burnt off, then he has no reason to come back. Or, two: he lives out of another cave on the ridge that we don’t know about. He could very well live close by for all we know. In that case, he’s sure to see our prints – there’s no way to hide them until the next rain. Then there’s always the question of whether he is or isn’t belligerent and never was, or that he doesn’t want to be found any more than we do. And there’s the thought that he may be a violent monster that loves to eat dead people that he kills fresh.”

  Wattenbarger swallowed hard. “You could’ve left that part out.”

  “Well, come to think about it,” Warren said with a serious tone, “did I mention the third theory?”

  “No,” Wattenbarger whispered. “What?”

  “What about Monatawana?” Warren asked gravely.

  “Hey, even he sounds better than the people-eating monster theory.”

  “We have a lot of work to do,” Warren said. “We’ve got to get busy and make some more prints.”

  Wattenbarger’s eyes shifted to the dark row of trees ahead into which the prints disappeared. “Did you bring your gun?” he asked.

  Warren pulled his .45 caliber hand gun out of his belt. “Yeah, how about you?”

  Wattenbarger smiled and pulled his own, flashing it before Warren .

  “Well, it’s more of a pacifier than a weapon,” Warren said, tucking his away.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because in this moonlight, a 30.06 with a night scope will blow your head right off from the tree line, no problem. Or it’ll empty your chest of your heart and the lung of his choice.”

  Wattenbarger closed his eyes, then said with a sigh, “Is there anything else you’d like to add to make our evening more productive or enjoyable?”

  Warren laughed with a sparkle in his eyes, then responded, “Think of it this way, my friend. You won’t feel a thing.”

  59

  Serea literally ran to the lowest levels of Pacifica to await the docking of the largest of Pacifica’s submarine shuttle craft that had been sent to collect Seven and company from the Phoenix. The Commander ran alongside her, ever functioning in his role of Serea’s guardian and protector as he had always done since she was a small girl.

  Serea ran into the huge lower compartment and was met at the airlock door by Commander Bill Harper, the Commanding Officer of the Leviathan, which sat still locked in its cavernous docking space. Serea looked over his shoulder and saw the huge, towering mast of the submarine which occupied most of the space of Pacifica’s docking port, capable of receiving and housing the Leviathan, securely locking it out in its vast space under one atmosphere of pressure. The area was even outfitted to pump the seawater out and dry-dock the huge underwater craft. Soon, the shuttle sub would dock and slide in beside the Leviathan.

  “I just heard, Serea!” Commander Harper said to her, his face beaming. “Thank God he’s safe. Now we can get underway at long last and go rescue the folks up at Dutch Harbor .”

  Serea’s face hardened. “I don’t know, Bill. Things are pretty screwed up around here now, as you know. Frank hasn’t even allowed us to communicate with them to let them know what’s going on.”

  Harper lost his smile. “We can’t let those people die. And Aaron gave them his word. Besides, now that he’s back, he’ll return to his former position; am I right?”

  “Did you get your pump fixed?” Serea asked, evading the question, her eyes anxiously scanning the panel indicating the position of the shuttle sub, just about to enter the docking port.

  “Yeah, it was fairly simple. We’re getting underway later today for our drive around the proverbial block. I’ve told Frank several times that we need to break up and randomize our patrols. But it’s like talking to a brick wall. It’s difficult to believe he’s actually a full United States Navy Admiral now.”

  “He promoted himself, I guess you know,” Serea said in disgust.

  “What?” Harper responded. “Even he knows better than that!”

  “What command authority did you think actually promoted him?”

  Harper’s face reddened. “I never knew. He just showed up in my cabin one day and announced his promotion. I figured he received it from an outside authority. I never dreamed…”

  “We haven’t received any communication from an outside authority in weeks, Bill. I guess he figured he was it – the new Admiral of the World’s navies.”

  “Shuttle in docking lockout. Pumping down to one point zero,” said a metallic speaker beside them.

  Serea’s eyes shifted to the huge round door before her eyes. In just minutes, it would swing open as the docking sub pulled alongside the railing against which she was standing.

  Serea clutched the metal railing tightly. Her mind raced with the thought of seeing her beloved Aaron again. Her father had become strange, distant and deeply depressed. She longed to touch sanity again, and knew that it would soon be walking before her in the form of her hero, husband, lover and friend. While those around her recognized the malaise of her father and the tragic mistake of putting Spencer in charge, they were all as helpless as she was to make any changes. If Professor Raylond Desmond would not listen to her, he would listen to no one.

  “Docking port unlocked,” the speaker toned.

  Serea’s eyes watched as the huge door swung slowly open. She also saw that all around her the passageways, walkways and railings were beginning to fill with citizens of Pacifica . There was hardly room to move. The word had filtered quickly throughout the community: the leader they all thought they would never see again was returning.

  “Make a way, please,” the Commander ordered, walking with Harper and pulling Serea though the crowd as many quickly clutched her hand, in tears, speaking their congratulations and expressing their joy.

  Serea, the Commander and Harper stood on the edge of the dock as the squat, yellow and black shuttle submarine pulled up to the docking rail. Serea’s eyes strained through the low ports to catch a glimp
se of Aaron. In just a few moments, the upper hatch popped open and Aaron Seven was the first one though. As he stood on the deck he waved, then the crowd around him burst into wild applause.

  Behind Seven onto the deck of the submarine climbed tiny Luci who immediately clung to his leg, her eyes wide and terrified. Behind Luci a hulking, bearded man appeared dressed in a colorful Hawaiian shirt. Quickly emerging from the submarine after him was a lovely oriental woman wearing a short black dress that clung provocatively to, and carefully outlined, her shapely, petite frame.

  Serea raced as quickly as she could and leapt onto the deck of the submarine. Seven met her with a tight embrace.

  “Oh God, Aaron; I knew you weren’t gone! You couldn’t be dead! Oh, thank-you God,” she cried as her fingers raced through his hair and across his face, her eyes boring into his.

  Seven smiled and kissed her deeply, his own tears revealing his emotions that had been kept in check far too long.

  “Good Lord, lady, he said you were a looker, but I had no idea,” said the bearded man behind them.

  Seven smiled. “Serea, this man is my own personal savior. Meet the one and only Striker Legend. He fished me and Luci out of the deep ocean with one of his robots just in the nick of time. Believe it or not, we were actually dead and he actually restarted our hearts!”

  Serea looked at the large man who stared back at her with a gritty smile. “Thank-you so much, Mr. Legend,” she said. “I really want to hear this story.”

  “And so you shall, little lady,” he responded through a wide smile. “And this is my assistant, Sam.”

  Suddenly Seven lost his smile, even while he continued to tightly clutch Serea. He looked at her, then over her shoulder to the Commander and Harper. “Your father put Frank in charge, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Serea whispered.

  “And you haven’t gone out for the Dutch Harbor rescue,” Seven said pointedly at Harper.

  “It’s not my idea,” Harper immediately replied. “Just following orders.”

  “Whose orders?” Seven asked in anger.

  “I haven’t been given permission from the boss,” Harper replied, returning Seven’s hard stare.

  “Well, we all have even more problems on our hands now,” Seven continued briskly. “… by the way, thanks for the loaner,” he added, pulling the .45 caliber Combat Commander out from behind him and handing it to Harper, butt first. “It got wet, but Striker here cleaned it up for you.”

  “Thanks,” Harper responded, receiving the hand gun, then he turned it over in his hand and returned it to Seven. “Keep it. I already checked out another one just like it.”

  Seven just nodded his thanks and returned the piece to his rear waistband. “We need to have a serious talk, all of us,” he said to the assembled group as Serea clung to him on one side and tiny Luci clutched his opposite leg. “We have a situation that requires an immediate response. Is the Leviathan capable of getting underway for Dutch Harbor ?”

  “Yes,” Harper replied. “The moment I’m given clearance, we’re ready.”

  “Striker and I have a plan,” Seven replied with a snap, “but we need to work it right now. Minutes count, and none of us have any time to argue about it.” He gently took a step away from Serea, looked at her and asked, “Can you call a meeting?”

  “Right now?” she answered, obviously pained, as though she had another, more personal rendezvous in mind.

  “Right now,” he responded sharply, then immediately reconsidered. “No – make it an hour. I have to change and freshen up a bit, but the leadership of this community must meet on this with all haste.” Then Seven looked at Serea and slyly winked. “You need to brief me in detail before I walk into the witches den.”

  “Good plan,” Commander Harper responded dryly, missing the more personal exchange altogether. He looked Seven in the eyes. “I think you need to know a few things about some changes made in your absence before you go walking into any meeting around here.”

  “Aaron! Dr. Seven!” a thin voice shouted over the noise of the building crowd. “It’s me!”

  Seven turned and looked to see the face of his personal assistant, Twink, his hand frantically waving above the crowd. He smiled and waved back. “What’s he wearing?” Seven asked Serea. “It looks like he’s dressed up as a janitor.”

  “He is,” she sighed, struggling to hold back another round of tears.

  gh

  Seven’s desire to assemble a full-blown meeting of Pacifica ’s leadership was sorely off the mark. Serea wisely contacted her assistant, Edgar Allen, to make the arrangements on her behalf. But her desire to conduct her own very private meeting with her husband while filling him in on the details of the past weeks combined to stave the meeting time off for three full hours.

  Those hours passed in an awful blur. Seven’s parents were terribly emotional to find their son alive and well again. Luci adeptly absorbed all the emotions of the weeping adults around her and sensed a crisis. She clung to Seven’s leg and fought valiantly as she was handed over to the Skillshackels.

  Serea was so emotional that she was barely able to reveal the essential parts of the story in the privacy of their room. She told him that after giving him up as lost, they pointed the badly damaged VTOL in the direction of Pacifica , flying home on the thread-bare hope they would actually make it before they ran out of fuel or the sun rose and killed them in flight. The VTOL did not make it and crashed into the ocean half a mile from the platform after the full disk of the sun had risen over the horizon.

  From the safety of Pacifica , Spencer declared them lost and ordered the platform to submerge even after the VTOL had been sighted inbound. But Kevin Leighthouser pretended not to hear the command and launched a rubber raft powered by a hefty pair of outboard engines and successfully plucked Desmond, Serea and the Commander out of the water. Later, this act of bravery netted him formal charges of refusal to obey a direct order. They all received an acute dose of radiation before they could submerge. After four days of nausea and fatigue, they recovered enough to resume their duties. Leighthouser was indefinitely confined to his quarters under arrest where he still remained.

  But Serea was deep in grief over the loss of Seven, and Professor Desmond’s depression only deepened. It was at this critical moment that Spencer took command of Pacifica enabled by a simple nod of approval from Desmond. Furthermore, Spencer announced that Serea’s government was ‘unworkable and absurd’ and that he would be writing up another charter at some later date. Until then, he was in charge and in control of everything and everyone. He received no resistance from Desmond at all.

  Serea explained though a veil of tears how she had struggled to hold back Spencer’s bloodless coup d'état’, but, for the first time in her life, her father had slipped beyond her reach into a deep, psychological morass and remained totally unresponsive.

  By the time they all assembled in a conference room beside the Command Center , everyone present was stressed and ready for a fight to the finish. No one sat in the seats at the table except for Desmond who was at the head position. He remained silent, looking terribly old and frail, his eyes cast downward, his mouth and jaw turned down and brooding. Around the room stood Seven, Serea, the Commander, Sean Conlin, Striker Legend and Sam, Bill Harper, Frank Spencer and his aide, Vance Armstrong, and an individual dressed in a U.S. Navy Shore Patrol uniform whose name-tag read, ‘EMERSON’. In place on his hip was a more than conspicuous black handgun.

  Finally, Seven began, “I called this meeting to warn the community of an imminent danger. We need to take immediate action now – right now.”

  “You have no authority to call a meeting of this community’s leadership, of which you are no longer counted,” Spencer fired back instantly. “The only reason I’m in attendance is to finish the rumors that you have any place in Pacifica at all, much less a leadership role. If you’re to remain here after today, it’ll be my choice, and you’ll be formally charged and stand trial for derel
iction of duty, incompetence and destruction of government property.”

  “And just who the hell is this blowhard?” Legend asked in a loud voice, looking at Seven.

  “Mr. Armstrong, see to it that this man and his little whore are removed from this room immediately,” Spencer barked to his aide, eyes shifting to Legend and Sam.

  Armstrong swaggered forward with a smirk on his face, quickly and confidently, and placed his hand on Legend’s right arm. But as his left hand reached for Sam, there was an instantaneous blur of indistinct motion. Half a second later, Armstrong’s body sailed across the shiny, black top of the conference table and he landed in a groaning heap on the floor opposite them. Sam’s black eyes shifted to Spencer’s and held steady.

  “Hmmm,” Legend said with a satisfied smile. “Imagine that. I don’t remember Sam ever leaving anyone alive. Mr. Armstrong, can you hear me?”

  Armstrong managed to mumble a pained, “Yes.”

  “Come back over here,” Legend ordered.

  Armstrong was helped to his feet by Emerson who unwisely unbuckled his sidearm.

  “Emerson, place that gun on the table and slide it to me,” Seven said.

  Emerson froze, eyes shifting back and forth between Spencer and Seven.

  “Right now,” Seven ordered.

  “Don’t you dare disarm yourself!” Spencer shouted, rage building across his face.

  “Okay, my friend, here’s the deal,” Seven explained. “Slide your piece across the table or I’m going to send Sam here to fetch it for me. And if she does that, you will be stuffed in a body bag tonight. You decide.”

  Emerson sighed, then carefully pulled the firearm out of his belt and slid it over to Seven.

  Seven immediately reached for the weapon and passed it to Commander Bill Harper. “You’re in charge of the gun locker around here, I assume. You’d think these people would know that it’s not smart to fire a gun inside a thin metal bubble under over 200 feet of seawater.”