“Why?” Michelle nearly screamed.
Pahhal looked contemplative and disconsolate for a moment. “To understand that, you must understand something about the Gael that no human knows,” he said.
“And I’m guessing you don’t mind telling me because I’m about to go into one of these… what? Freezer units?” she demanded.
“Cryonic devices,” he replied. “And no, you won’t be going into one. You’re the last, and soon we shall all be going to Gael space together. You’re correct in that I don’t mind telling you because we are so close to the end.” He took a deep breath and continued, “You first must understand that the Gael are not from this realm of existence.”
“What does that mean?” she demanded.
“We are from another dimension,” he said. “And we were banished here long, long ago.”
“Why were you banished?” she demanded.
“It has been so long that no one even remembers,” he said. “There are very few records from our initial time in this galaxy, but those things that are remembered are quite important. The dimension from which we were expelled was our… heaven, to use a Terran word. Nirvana, paradise, Eden… None of these words quite describe what our home is. The Gael are intrinsically tied to this place. Why this is, I cannot say, but I know that we are instinctively linked to our home and we feel its absence every moment of every day. I believe it was a twentieth century religious figure who espoused that his concept of damnation was the complete absence of your God. Our damnation is the complete absence of our home, and we as a people, therefore, are confined to this place… this hell.”
For a moment, Michelle began to pity the Gael who stood before her. Then, she remembered what this alien was going to do to her and decided that hell might be the best place for him.
“The second thing you must understand is that there is a passage between this universe and our domain,” he continued. “It is an island on our current homeworld that we call the Great Gate. It has been locked to us for millennia, and it cannot be opened without a key.”
“I still don’t see what this has to do with one hundred and eleven humans,” she said.
“We are getting there, I promise,” he replied. “You are asking me to condense thousands of years of strife and struggle into a few minutes conversation. You must be patient.”
She made a non-committal noise.
“We know that those who banished us to this realm did not construct the Great Gate and that they had no control over the key,” he continued. “As such, the key cannot be kept on the other side of the Great Gate, it must be kept in this dimension.”
“How long have you been looking for it?” she asked.
“Ten thousand years,” he replied. “This mission has led to all of our technological developments, the unification of our race behind a united goal- we have become what we are because we seek this one goal together. And now, we have found it.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Right here,” he answered with a dark smile. “Right in this room. We scoured the planet we now call home for the key and then we went to space to search for it. Imagine our surprise when we found it in this backwater berth of a solar system.”
“If you found it, why do you need us?” she asked. “Why do you need one hundred and eleven humans?”
“Our wardens were cunning,” he said. “They split the key into pieces. One hundred and eleven of them to be precise.”
Michelle’s eyes widened. “W-w-what?” she stammered.
“The key to the Great Gate is the soul of a living being,” he said. “Those who put us here hid the key in your race when it was brand new, barely sentient. Those one hundred and eleven pieces of the key have been born and re-born over the generations of your people and now they reside in the one hundred and eleven souls in this room.”
“That’s not possible,” she protested.
“I won’t even begin to describe the lengths we have gone to find your race, Ms. Williams,” he said. “The other civilizations that we have carved from the skies in search of a way home. We went to war with your people and brought them to our heel, all in our effort to find you and your compatriots here.”
“How did you find us? The souls you needed?” she demanded.
“The soul is not so separate from the body it inhabits as your people tend to think,” he said. “Your soul is you. It shows in your DNA… in your genetics. It was very kind of your people to voluntary create a catalogue of all human beings’ DNA- it made our job much easier. Our leaders decided we should move slowly. No mistakes could be made. No deaths. Who knew how long it would take for a soul to cycle back around to be born again should one be killed? I must confess that this transmigration of souls remains something we don’t truly understand.”
Michelle could think of nothing to say. It seemed too far-fetched to be true. Would a race really go to war, commit atrocities all for a chance to go to a home they had not seen in ten thousand years? But then she realized something else. If the Gael finally had what they wanted, finally had found a way home, then they would leave this dimension and humanity would be free of them.
Pahhal smiled. “I see you have worked it out,” he said. “That is why it will not be necessary to freeze you, Ms. Williams. We studied all of the one hundred and eleven souls with great detail. You are a patriot- a true believer in the cause of humanity’s liberation. You now have the chance to rid them of the hated Gael once and for all time. I think you’ll take advantage of that opportunity. You’re going to come with me willingly, won’t you?”
Michelle took a deep breath and nodded.
“Thank you,” Pahhal said. He strode over to her and placed both his arms on her shoulders. “It would be difficult for me to explain, our emotions are quite dissimilar from yours I think, but there is a great reverence I feel for you, for all of you, my dear Ms. Williams. I am not foolhardy enough to believe that the people in these cryonics units would willingly make the same sacrifice for their people, but what you are doing for your people does you a great service. And even though I know the salvation of the Gael means little to you, your sacrifice will still mean everything to my people. When we have transcended once more to the other side of the Great Gate, we will honor and sing the praises of the one hundred and eleven souls that made it possible for us to return to our home.”
Michelle did not think she could take any more of his platitudes and was about to tell him so, when a loud alarm began to echo through the room. Pahhal looked around wildly and raced over to a computer monitor set into the wall by the door.
“What?” Michelle asked. “Is it a problem with one of the cryonic tubes?”
“No, it’s a general alert,” Pahhal responded. “There are intruders aboard the ship.”
Chapter 32
Matthew Jennings led his small force of four infiltrating one of the largest ships in the Terran Gael Force through the belly airlock of the Grey Vistula and down to the tarmac of the flight deck. Carrying the bag full of automatic plasma rifles, he motioned for Lafayette, Beauregard and Fix to follow him as he moved parallel to the fighter launch lane across from the wall that garaged all of the ship’s fighters.
Although the hangar deck of the Intrepid was mostly open space, the front right corner of the hangar was dominated by the Space Traffic Control Center, which was framed by a two story tall gray wall with large inset windows. The wall ran parallel to the fighter launch lane for several hundred feet before turning at a ninety degree angle and heading toward the starboard hull. The stern facing windows looked down on where the Intrepid’s runabout and the Grey Vistula were parked, but Jennings was leading them to the side that faced to port and a door that said Traffic Control.
The door was locked, but Minerva quickly bypassed it and Jennings swung the door open with ease. As with the hangar, the traffic control offices, the department that supervised the arrival and departure of shuttles, fighters and runabouts, were mostly empty. With no fighters on patr
ol and the runabout being the only ship out, traffic control had probably been handled from the bridge when they had arrived. During a cargo drop or a resupply though, this room would have been one of the busiest in the entire ship.
Interior lighting was dimmed, but there were a few desks that still had lights on. Only one crewman actually saw them, and he just nodded briefly as he looked out of his cubicle, a sleepy expression on his face, before he went back to doing some work on his computer. They passed a set of stairs, but Jennings ignored it, knowing that it led upstairs to the space traffic controller’s observation area. Instead, he led them further into the maze of cubicles until they had at last came to a lift and called for it.
The doors opened, and two crew members stepped out, holding hands, both women. The two groups took a moment to stare at each other awkwardly for a moment before Jennings looked intentionally to the ceiling and gestured with his head for the two ladies to move along. Looking visibly relieved, the two crewmen vanished into the cubicles, probably looking for a private place to make out or more, Jennings thought to himself. While relationships were not strictly verboten among enlisted personnel, frottage was certainly not allowed while at space. Jennings and the others piled into the elevator and hit the button for one floor above, which would take them to crew quarters.
“They thought you were going to bust them,” Beauregard said with a hint of laughter in her voice.
“At the next level, we need to get to the center of the ship, where there’s a lift that leads directly to security,” Jennings said.
“They’re probably thinking about you as they do… whatever they’re planning on doing,” she continued.
“Security’s built into an area completely surrounded by engineering,” Jennings continued, ignoring her. “That should make things easier for phase three.” He had told them all of this back on the ship before they had left.
“Something making you uncomfortable, captain?” she asked.
“Can we focus please?” he demanded as he looked at her crossly. He noticed that Lafayette and Fix were on the verge of snickering as well. “You’re acting as if you’ve never seen two pretty girls in uniform about to make out before.”
“And you have?” Beauregard demanded.
Jennings eyed her again, the barest hint of a smirk crossing his face. “I’ve got a few good memories of the war,” he said without further explanation.
They arrived at their destination and strode out into the corridor, looking for all the world as a group of fighter jocks who were taking a stroll through the enlisted personnel’s quarters. Most of the doors off the corridor were closed as crew members caught some shut-eye, but a few who were milling about in the hallway chatting drew up to attention as Jennings passed. He dismissed their attention with a short salute and kept walking as if he had barely noticed their existence.
They passed another group of crewmen sitting on the floor outside of their bunks playing poker. One of the women that was playing was either very comfortable in her own skin or they were playing strip poker and she was terrible. When they spotted Jennings, they looked horrified for a moment.
“Just keep it legal,” Jennings muttered as he marched on.
“You’re good at this,” Beauregard whispered from behind him. “Impersonating an officer, I mean. Using the uniform to play on their sense of fear, making them like you by ignoring some minor rule breaking, and at the same time making them not even question what a set of flyboys are doing in the crew quarters at this time of night.”
“I am an officer,” he responded. “Retired.”
“Cherie, this is not an act you’re seeing,” Lafayette whispered from behind her. “This is Lieutenant Matthew Jennings. Now, maybe you’ll understand why he commands loyalty, non?”
Beauregard shrugged as they emerged from the corridor and arrived in an oval shaped room that ran the width of the ship. Four corridors each led to the bow and the stern of the ship, all of which would have led to more crew quarters. There was a pair of lifts on the starboard and port sides and then one in the center of the stern section of the room. It was the one that led straight to security, but it also had two guards standing in front of it.
Jennings’ footsteps did not falter in the slightest and walked up to the two men as if he had expected to run into them. Minerva had mentioned nothing about security at the lift, and they did not have a plan prepared. Beauregard’s hand instinctively went into her pocket and wrapped around the handle of her plasma pistol, her finger slipping around the trigger and her thumb priming the charge just as Jennings began to speak.
Returning the salutes of the two men first, Jennings said, “I need access to the brig.”
The two guards exchanged glances. “I’m sorry, sir,” the first one said, who was tall, thin and looked like he was about nineteen years old. “Standing orders. No one goes to the brig.”
“On whose authority?” Jennings growled.
“General Ounimbango,” the second guard stammered.
“Do you really think I wouldn’t be here if General Ounimbango hadn’t signed off on it?” he demanded, hoping that Minerva was paying attention to what was going on. “I have the orders on the computer tablet right here.” He made a show of patting his pockets, looking for the display. He nodded toward Fix, who was at the back of their little pack. “The two of us caught those two,” he indicated Beauregard and Lafayette, “In one of the Traffic Control offices on the hangar deck.”
Beauregard looked scandalized, but Fix merely shrugged as Jennings pulled out the computer tablet. He gave it a glance before handing it over to the guard. Minerva did good work on the fly- the order looked official, and she had even found a previous order with Ounimbango’s electronic signature on it and had replicated it for the order.
“Apologies, sir,” the first guard said as he passed the tablet back and stepped aside.
“No problem, son,” he said as he stepped forward into the lift, Fix escorting the other two in. “Hopefully some time in the brig will teach these two to keep it in their pants until shore leave.”
As soon as the door was shut, Beauregard eyed him with an annoyed expression. “Do you really think it’s convincing that someone who looks like me would be with someone who looks like him?” she demanded.
“There’s a black market scrap dealer who finds him attractive enough,” Jennings pointed out.
“She must have terrible taste,” Beauregard muttered.
“What the hell?” Lafayette groaned.
“It’s not a she,” Jennings pointed out and Beauregard snorted. The lift reached the security level and he added quickly, “Game faces on.”
The security station on the Intrepid did not have the soft lighting, bland carpeting and taupe walls of the crew corridors. It was brightly lit by fluorescents in the ceiling and the wall, had white and black tile floors, and a large white desk with SECURITY stenciled across it in large black letters with a security officer sitting behind it. The room had a very anti-septic, hospital feel to it. Behind the guard and the desk, they could see a door that would lead to the brig and their ultimate destination. To their left was a corridor that led to several closed doors, behind which Jennings knew were armories, briefing rooms, evidence storage and forensics. To their immediate right was a room that had walls of shaded glass. Inside of it, three men sat with their backs to Jennings, watching four dozen computer monitors.
Two security officers were standing at the desk talking to the guard and they looked over when Jennings and his crew strode in. The security guards’ black uniforms stuck out against the stark white environs. They eyed the new arrivals suspiciously as Jennings strode up to the counter to talk to the desk sergeant and he sensed the others spread out a bit behind him, Lafayette pretending to be interested as to what was on the security monitors, Beauregard leaning on the desk, pretending to be bored, and Fix crossing his arms impatiently behind Jennings.
“Evening,” Jennings said.
“May I help you?
” the desk sergeant grumbled before his brain caught onto the fact that Jennings was wearing a pilot’s jumpsuit and that all pilots were officers and added, “Sir.”
“I wanted to speak to one of your prisoners,” he said.
The desk sergeant exchanged a look with one of the two guards he had been conversing with before he looked back to Jennings and said, “No one is allowed to see the prisoners without the order of General Ounimbango.”
“Of course,” Jennings said, reaching into his pocket for the computer tablet.
“In person,” the desk sergeant clarified before Jennings could produce anything to show.
“That is disappointing,” Jennings said as he rummaged in his pocket for another device. “Rumor had it that Anastasia Petrova was one of the prisoners, and well… I know a guy.”
The desk sergeant looked perplexed.
“A guy Petrova screwed over if you know what I mean,” Jennings explained. “He would think kindly of my taking her on a walk around the block, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” the desk sergeant said. “And what did you say your name was again.”
“Nicholas Nickleby, Lieutenant,” he said offering his hand.
Acting on unconscious instinct, the desk sergeant leaned forward and grasped it just as one of the other security officers said, “Isn’t that the guy from that book?”
Jennings yanked the desk sergeant forward and jabbed his pistol into his ribs. “Not a sound,” he warned.
In a flash, Beauregard had hit one of the other guards with a lightning-prod, and Fix had injected the other with a fast-acting sedative. Lafayette had drawn his plasma pistol and had the men in the observation room with their hands in the air in less than five seconds.
“What’s your name, sergeant?” Jennings asked calmly to the now suddenly awake and sweating desk sergeant.
“Vlad Podolski,” he responded.
“Do you mind if I call you Vlad?” he asked.
111 Souls (Infinite Universe) Page 31
