“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
The rod fell from her grip, crashing to the floor with a tinny clang. She peered round the doorframe once more to see if anyone had heard.
“How did he know?” she wondered, her hands trembling. Somehow, her father had known that one day she would stumble upon the lab, and he had left a secret message for her to discover. She marveled at his confidence that she would be the one to find his breadcrumb, and if she knew her father, she was certain the trail would not end here.
He had called her Little Star when she was a child, an affectionate nickname taken from an ancient nursery rhyme. On her tenth birthday, she decided she was too mature for such a childish moniker and she asked him to stop using it. Every now and then, however, he still teased her with the nickname, and she would feign offense by it. Decades later, and countless miles from home, he was reaching out from his past into her present with a secret.
Evangeline began casting her eyes about the lab, scanning for the symbol that marked where he had hidden a treasure. Nothing immediately grabbed her attention. Her team members kept returning from the airlock and exiting again with armfuls of equipment and papers. She meandered about the room, attempting to appear inconspicuous, acting as if she were following mission protocol.
She pretended to exam the various pieces of equipment and papers, but her eyes were on a vigilant crusade to find the image burned into her childhood memories. Her examination of the lab was proving to be fruitless, so she decided to take her quest into the other sections of the facility. As she walked out the doorway to the lab, she glanced down the corridor. She saw Weston and Harper struggling to carry a large crate, while Lennox, Dunbar, and Hicks were loaded down with smaller crates of their own.
It was then she noticed a small blinking light just inside a distant doorway across the corridor from the mess hall. There must have been a short in the wiring. On, off, and then on, off, on. The flickers appeared to be senseless and random, until there was a short burst, and then a short pause followed by three short bursts of light. Dot – dot-dot-dot. Evangeline recognized her name repeating in historic Morse code. She walked out of the office and down the corridor, being careful to appear casual. The team was in the lab, returning for another load of equipment. Weston approached Evangeline and intercepted her while the others continued their ant-like column into the main lab.
“Captain, Graham was pissed that you didn’t report back yourself,” he said with a wary look on his face. “He ordered you to report directly to him… immediately,” he added, doing his best to imitate Graham’s pompous pattern of speech.
Everyone on the ship, except for Evangeline and Weston, was afraid of Commander Silas Graham. Graham made it a point on a daily basis to ensure the crew of the Chiron knew about his political connections back on Earth. His constant threats about how he could make their lives miserable upon their return if they did not follow his every order with exactness kept the crew on edge day after day.
Evangeline saw the smirk on his face and they smiled at their shared secret. “Thanks, Weston. When you’re back out there, please inform Commander Graham that I’m attending to some ‘lady-business’,” she said, making air-quote with her fingers, “and will be indisposed for the next twenty minutes.” Weston nodded with a grin, walking away to help Hicks with another large crate. Evangeline smiled in spite of herself.
Graham could not tolerate insinuations of bodily functions. He had no trouble making sexually derogatory comments to the female soldiers and crew, but when the tables were turned, he would walk away from the conversation, flustered. He would later get his revenge by punishing the offender with some menial task for openly embarrassing him. For her little stunt, Evangeline suspected she would be scrubbing latrines with her toothbrush upon her return to the Chiron. The short-lived pleasure of pushing Graham’s buttons became a dull ache at the reminder that she no longer had lady business to attend to ever again. Evangeline buried the ache back to the hidden corner of her mind and returned her attention to the flashing beacon down the hall.
She scanned the corridor again to verify the location and status of each of her team members before entering the room with the blinking light. It was a medium-sized bunkroom containing eighteen triple-bunk beds and a small toilet compartment off in one corner. “Cozy quarters,” she thought to herself. She had less privacy on the cruiser sharing a room half its size with twice the number of pilots.
She began scanning every surface in the room, searching for her symbol. She knew it was in there somewhere, it had to be. Her father must have slept in this room and left behind the symbol for her to find one day. She startled when she spotted it, across the room and just behind the second set of bunk beds against the far wall. It was unmistakable, her little four-pointed star scratched into a wall tile. The same star she had tattooed behind her right ear, hidden just above her hairline.
She pulled out her field knife and began digging out the mortar holding the tile in place. She glanced over her shoulder every few seconds to make sure no one walked in on her. She managed to catch the tile as it fell away from the wall before smashing into bits against the floor. With the tile removed, Evangeline discovered it had been concealing a small hole behind the wall. It looked like many residents had used it to keep their secrets hidden over the years. The hole was approximately one inch in diameter and six inches deep, and within this secret compartment was a piece of paper rolled up into a scroll.
She was running out of time - she had already pressed her luck pursuing her personal investigation this far. Pulling out her sidearm, she wrapped the paper around the metal cylinder she had discovered in the dead Angel’s fist and stuffed them both into the barrel of her weapon. No one else would be checking or cleaning her weapon for the remainder of the mission, making her firearm as good a place as any for hiding her contraband. As long as a firefight did not break out on this benign expedition, she was confident she could carry her secrets home in safety.
She returned her weapon to its holster and made her way back into the main corridor. She glanced around as she cleared the doorway to see if anyone noticed her exiting that room, just in case someone grew curious about her disappearing for a few minutes.
She entered the main lab and stood beside one of the tables, which was now clear of equipment. Hicks was nearby, entering data into his arm console. He looked up upon her arrival.
“I’m just trying to make a preliminary inventory of this equipment, ma’am,” he offered. “I promise I’m not slacking off.”
“As you were, Hicks,” Evangeline answered with a smile. “I understand how important it is to Graham that things are done just so,” she said, chopping her hand through the air like a knife in a perfect imitation of Graham. Everyone aboard the Chiron mocked him for the ridiculous and over-used gesture.
At that moment, a sudden commotion down the corridor drew their attention. Bangs and crashes echoed from the airlock down the hall, mingled with incoherent shouts. A figure clad in a baby blue environmental suit stormed into the lab. Evangeline recognized him in an instant. It was Collin Peterson, the lead tech of Graham’s private research squad. They were not the reinforcements Evangeline had requested to help clear the lab of equipment. The arrival of Peterson and his team meant only one thing, and she was livid over their intrusion.
“Captain Chapel,” he addressed her, “your team is hereby ordered to return to the Chiron immediately. You will be detained for exposing yourself, your team, and the entire ship to a potential bio-containment hazard by opening an unsecured stasis tube without proper authorization.”
Other members of Peterson’s tech crew began to swarm the lab. If Evangeline had not known that Peterson did not have a sense of humor, she would have thought he was joking. Graham’s orders for this mission had been vague and open-ended, and as captain, she had the authority to make decisions as she thought best. She knew this was Graham’s retaliation for her earlier disobedience, for making him look like a fo
ol. But sending in the tech team on her watch was crossing the line.
Without another word, Evangeline stopped what she was doing. “Understood,” she said. She turned away from the table. “My team!” she called into her headset. “Drop what you’re doing and return to your TRTVs for immediate departure to the drop ship. This is now Peterson’s investigation.”
All members of her team echoed acknowledgement of their new orders, but Harper’s response made the rest of the team laugh.
“Good,” he said. “I was getting tired of pretending to look busy.”
TWENTY-ONE
Evangeline’s eyes started to regain their focus just enough to make out some of the details of her attacker. She was dressed from head to toe in charcoal black with a hood that blended into the collar of her suit. It covered and obscured her face, making it impossible for Evangeline to identify any of her features. She was so dark she looked like she spent a year inside a coalmine after swimming in ink. Her dark clothes spilled into the blackness of the maze walls behind her. It was near impossible for Evangeline to distinguish between the walls and her attacker. She glanced to her right and spotted Jack face down, unconscious on the ground.
Another figure clad in an inky body suit was standing over Jack, in a slight crouch, holding a slender baton that sparkled on one end. This individual was taller, more masculine than Evangeline’s attacker, and his suit had oddly placed seams and bulges along the arms, legs, and torso of his clingy uniform.
Evangeline stared back into the featureless face inches from her own.
“You’d better start talking,” her female attacker growled, masking her voice. “What did you take from the lab?” The point of the knife dug deeper into Evangeline’s skin and she winced, sucking in a lungful of air through her teeth. She formulated a split-second plan in her mind to save her husband from harm.
“Okay, I’ll tell you. Please, don’t hurt Jack,” she pleaded with a catch in her throat. She inhaled shallow gulp of air. “I took a picture of my parents.”
The knife slid away from her throat and the woman eased off her chest, allowing Evangeline her first lungful of air in several minutes. She winced as rattling coughs erupted between gasps.
“After I realized the code to the secure lab was from my father, I wandered through the facility looking for any other sign that they had been there.”
Evangeline’s mind raced to weave a plausible story as the words spilled from her mouth, aiming for a believable balance of truth and lies to protect herself and Jack. She prayed she could be convincing; prayed that it would be enough
“I came across the bunkroom and saw a star carved in the tile. That was my father’s nickname for me, Little Star,” she feigned a sob, her lip quivering. “Behind the tile I found a picture of my parents. They betrayed me, but they were still my parents. That picture is all I have left of them. Please don’t take it from me.”
The woman eased further off of Evangeline, and slid the knife into a pocket on her thigh.
“Where is the picture now?” the woman asked in a husky voice. When Evangeline did not respond, the woman nodded toward her partner. His weapon made a high-pitched crackling sound and he raised his arm, preparing to strike down on Jack’s still form.
“No, please!” Evangeline cried. She let out a desperate sigh. “It’s in my locker on base, attached to the underside of the shelf.” Her pleading eyes looked up into the black mask. “Please don’t kill us.”
Evangeline could still hear the faint, scratchy voice over the headset. “Keep them alive until you have that photograph. Then eliminate them like the others.”
Without warning, the man standing over Jack threw his head backwards, as if punched with some invisible fist. His arms went limp, dropping the baton as he dropped to the floor like a wet towel. The baton clanged against the concrete floor, collapsing down to a third of its length, extinguishing the sparks.
The woman turned her head, watching her partner crumple into a heap. Evangeline heard the muffled voice behind her attacker’s shroud. “Evade!”
The cloaked woman sprang to her feet, glanced around, and bolted for an opening in the maze to her right. Within nanoseconds, the lights of the arena flickered on and security officers flooded the maze from multiple directions, shouting directions to each other. Evangeline crawled over to Jack and tried to roll him onto his back. The indistinct shouting from the security personnel continued. Through Evangeline’s panic, she caught wisps of their dialogue: “got away,” “slipped right past us,” “didn’t even see her coming.”
Jack groaned as Evangeline removed his helmet from off his head. She collapsed on top of him and embraced him on the floor, burying her head in his chest. He raised his left arm and squeezed her closer to him. She gave him a hard, desperate kiss on the mouth. Jack moaned and reached up to hold his head with his right hand.
“Does that kiss mean you want to keep me around?” he asked, rubbing the goose egg that throbbed on the back of his head.
Evangeline let out a sound resembling a combination of a laugh and a sob. “Yes! I don’t want you to go anywhere!” She kissed him again.
Jack sat up with help from Evangeline and one of the security officers. He shook his head trying to clear his vision. He gave Evangeline a very serious look.
“I guess this means you’ll be ok with me spending more time here, huh?” he asked. Evangeline took a step back, stunned.
“I almost lost you in this stupid place,” she said with a catch in her throat. “And now you think you’ll be able to spend even more time down here? What makes you think I’ll even let you step foot in this place again?” she asked.
Jack just grinned and held up his right arm showing her the display on his control cuff. “When I came to I heard you crying, but I couldn’t make out the other side of the conversation. So I pretended to be unconscious and used my override controls to call out for help. And then I did something really crazy.”
Jack’s thumb wiggled a small joystick on the side of his glove. Evangeline’s eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open as she remembered one of his crazy yet brilliant additions to G-Zero. A long-range rifle had been mounted in the rafters above the maze that Jack could maneuver to target enemy players anywhere within in the arena.
“God-Mode,” he chuckled with a song in his voice.
TWENTY-TWO
The darkness surrounding Campbell overpowered the small desk lamp as he sat in his office in the upper levels of Olympus. He removed the earpiece - white, with an “O” etched in silver on its surface - and placed it back in the hidden compartment within his desk.
The mission had not been a complete failure, nor was it a success. One of the agents, the male, became inoperable when he took a hit in the SimCom arena. Campbell considered it fortunate that the female managed to evade capture and had gained some information regarding Matthew Chapel’s visit to the abandoned mining facility.
“I must put an end to this before it goes any further,” Campbell thought to himself. “This is getting out of hand.”
He sat forward in his chair, placing his elbows on his desk and drumming his fingers together. By now, the security officers who had apprehended the male agent will have begun their futile attempt to search him, but their outdated technology would be useless in establishing the agent’s identity for some time. Campbell would have time to the next hour laying the groundwork for their cover story. He sat in the silent darkness as he formulated his next course of action.
He reopened the secret compartment and retrieved the white earpiece. Once inside his ear, it activated a connection between him and his operative. He had an efficient rapport with her, recruiting her from the TRTV program himself. Their work together had been effective and, up until that evening, untraceable. They had to contain the mess at the arena without involving more resources. Nothing and no one could be allowed to interfere; otherwise, everything they had been building could crumble. Only a few select individuals outside the Quorum had any knowl
edge of the truth that Matthew and Elizabeth had uncovered during their research within the mines.
Campbell’s voice dissipated in the darkness as he gave his operative her new instructions. “I want you to retrieve the item and bring it to me. We will need to escalate our plans regarding Captain Evans.” The agent’s end of the channel was silent. “Is there a problem?” Campbell asked.
“No, sir,” her voice answered after a hesitative pause. “There’s no problem. It’ll be taken care of. I’ll see to it myself.”
“Shall I assign someone else to take care of this?” he asked with cold indifference. He was not going to mess around if her resolve to her assignment was questionable.
“No, sir,” she said with a snip of defensiveness. “I will handle it.”
“Then handle it. Report back when you have the item,” he hissed. He terminated the connection and Campbell again concealed the earpiece within his desk. He sat back in his chair, crossed his arms, leaned his head back against the seat, and took several deep, slow breaths.
In his mind he studied the possible outcomes to the new course of action, analyzing causes and effects, pros and cons. He began spinning around in his chair with closed eyes while he continued to develop potential strategies for the various unwanted scenarios that had the highest potential to arise.
He dropped his toes to the floor, dragging his chair to a stop. Facing his desk he opened the secret compartment once again, unearthing a second device, slipping it into his other ear. This earpiece was golden in hue with a lightning bolt etched on the side. It activated the instant he lodged it in his ear canal, connecting him to another voice belonging to an individual he had not yet met in person.
Campbell knew nothing of the disembodied voice save for one thing - a name. A name infused with strength and authority, borrowed from the mythology of the ancients. This mythological god was the most powerful among all the archaic deity. The name was enough for Campbell to show deference and obedience to whatever the voice directed out of fear of the wrath this entity could inflict.
Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) Page 13
