Ben shook his head. “We wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
“There must have been something more we could have done,” Desiree said.
“Like what?” Ben replied.
“At the very least, we could have worked faster to save everyone on board,” Commander Johnson suggested.
“If you had believed me,” Ben replied.
“We’re believing you now, aren’t we?”
“Is someone going to explain what the hell is going on, or should I just assume that all of this is a bad dream?” Councilor Markov asked.
“I’m having some trouble filling in the gaps myself,” Alexander said.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Ben asked.
“The containment breach,” Markov replied. “Everyone was confined to quarters. I went to bed that night, and then I woke up here.”
Ben shook his head. “You woke up infected with an alien virus—that virus is the Entity.”
“Infected? I feel fine.”
“We cured you, but you don’t remember anything from the time you were infected.”
“And who the hell are you?” Markov demanded.
“He’s Ben,” Alexander said quietly. “Benevolence’s little brother.”
Ben turned to him with a smile. “You remember me.”
“Hard to forget.”
“How long was I infected?” Markov asked.
“Three days,” Ben replied.
Catalina blinked. “Three days?” She remembered waking up only this morning to find Alexander in a coma. That had only been hours ago, not days.
“We lost some time when the Entity brought us here and ran experiments on us,” Ben explained.
Catalina checked her ARCs for the date and time, but they were offline. Ben must have had another means of tracking the time. She turned to glance around the room.
“Where exactly are we?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. Aboard a harvester, maybe,” Ben said.
“A harvester?” Markov asked.
“The cylindrical ship that captured us,” Ben explained. “They’re Gray vessels, designed to capture other species’ ships. The Grays used them for research, but the Entity adapted them to spread itself, even in space.”
“I don’t care where we are,” Remo said, pounding a wall with his fist. “What I want to know is how to get out.”
The corners of Ben’s mouth drooped. “It’s no use. It’s over. I failed you.”
“We failed you,” Jessica said, coming to stand beside him.
Remo walked around the edges of the room, knocking on the walls and listening. When he heard a hollow thunk, he stopped and said, “It’s hollow here. I think I found a door.”
“Councilor, mind lending me a hand?”
Markov approached Remo, frowning. He stopped and crossed his arms over his barrel chest. “I don’t see a door.”
Remo rapped his knuckles on the wall again, eliciting another hollow sound. “It’s there.” He stepped away. “Your arms are prosthetic, right? You might just be able to make a dent. Give it your best shot.”
Markov hesitated, glancing from the wall to Remo and back again. Then he hammered the wall with his fist, and a gigantic boom echoed through the room. Markov shook out his fist, as if hitting the wall had actually hurt. He would have tactile sensors in his prosthetics, but pain would be capped off at mild discomfort.
Catalina watched anxiously, peering at the spot Markov had hit, but the glossy black surface of the wall wasn’t even scuffed.
“It’s no use,” Ben said. “Even if you find a door, it’ll be far too strong for us to break out.”
“So that’s it?” Commander Johnson demanded. “You’re just going to give up? You’re no better than Benevolence!”
Ben sent her a defeated look, saying nothing. He walked over to one side of the room and sat down.
“Now what?” Catalina whispered.
Alexander shook his head and followed Benjamin’s example. Soon they were all sitting on the hard deck, wallowing in their powerlessness. Catalina hugged her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them. No one talked, each of them locked in their own private world. Long minutes passed and Catalina closed her eyes, dozing off.
A bright flash of light woke her. She looked up, furiously blinking the spots from her eyes and trying to see what had caused that flash of light. It still suffused the room, but more dimly now. Through the brightness she saw the air shimmering like the air in a desert, but the shimmering was confined to a distorted spherical shape—a bubble.
As the brightness faded, Catalina saw that the bubble gave a view into another world, one of familiar gray walls, polished floors, and exposed conduits in the ceiling. It was one of the corridors aboard the Liberty.
“What the...?” Alexander said.
Another hologram, Catalina decided. What was the Entity going to show them now?
But Ben jumped up with sudden excitement. “Let’s go! Hurry!”
With that, he ran into the bubble, provoking another flash of light. Catalina shielded her eyes, wincing against the glare, but the brightness soon faded. A miniature version of Ben now stood inside of the bubble, aboard the Liberty, waving them over.
Jessica was the first to follow, dashing through with a grin—another flash of light, and another miniature figure appeared waving to them from the other side.
Catalina hesitated, but Alexander took her hand and pulled her toward the portal. The others snapped out of it, too, and soon all of them were racing through with consecutive flashes of light.
Chapter 23
Catalina walked inside the bubble. A bright light surrounded her, seeming to carry her through. There came a brief moment of weightless nothingness, and then she blinked and she was standing on the other side, back on board the Liberty with all of the others.
“What was that?” Remo asked, turning to look back the way they’d come.
Dr. Laskin stared at the portal in shock.
Catalina studied the portal from the other side; it was a shimmering spherical window into the glossy black chamber where they’d been trapped a moment ago.
The portal vanished with a noisy crack, and the walls and floor of the ship shuddered with the echoes of its passing.
“We still have a chance,” Ben announced, glancing around, searching for something. “Hello?” he asked.
A short, bony gray creature appeared standing right behind him, naked and sexless. One of the Grays.
“Look out!” Alexander warned, lunging toward it.
Ben spun to face the alien, and—
He smiled. “There you are.”
Alexander fetched up short, his brow furrowed in confusion. The creature inclined its head to Ben and turned to stare at one of the doors in the corridor. Ben ran over there and waved the door open. “Perfect,” he said, and dashed inside.
Jessica followed Benjamin. “Come on!” she urged.
This one’s on our side... Catalina thought, staring at the alien. Again she remembered waking up on board the Liberty and seeing one of those aliens standing at the foot of her bed. It must have been you, she realized, staring at the creature. Its giant black eyes settled on her, and it stared back, as if it could read her thoughts.
Remo was the first to risk walking by the alien to see where Ben and Jessica had gone. He stopped in the open doorway and whistled appreciatively. “Nice!”
Catalina crept by the Gray to see for herself. Alexander kept pace beside her, while Commander Johnson, Councilor Markov, and Doctor Laskin trailed behind.
When she reached the open door, Catalina saw that it led to an armory, the walls lined with racks of weapons and armor. Ben and Jessica stood in front of a particular locker, withdrawing bulky black boxes with adjustable shoulder straps. Backpacks? Catalina wondered.
Ben turned from the locker. “What are you waiting for? We don’t know how long we have before they realize we’re missing.”
Remo strode through, an
d the rest of them followed. Catalina glanced around the room, wondering what she was supposed to do. Councilor Markov looked equally lost, but Desiree, Alexander, and Commander Johnson went straight for the suits of armor. Those suits stood upright in semi-circular pods, matte black and all but disappearing in the dim light of the armory.
Alexander stepped up to one of the pods and summoned a holographic display; then he began making selections, stabbing and swiping the air with his fingers. Commander Johnson, Remo, and Desiree busied themselves by doing the same, obviously already familiar with the interfaces.
The pods lit up from within one after another, and the suits of armor splayed open with metallic clicking sounds. Catalina watched Alexander step inside, lining up his arms and legs. More metallic clicking sounds, echoed through the room as the suit sealed around him. The others weren’t far behind. Matching black helmets dropped down over their heads, and sealed with a hiss of escaping air.
They stepped out of the pods, servos whirring, metal feet clanking on the deck. Alexander turned and nodded to Catalina with a reassuring smile, his features illuminated by cold blue lights inside the helmet.
“Your turn,” he said, his voice conveyed clearly via external speakers.
She shook her head. “I don’t know how...”
“I’ll show you,” he replied, clanking over to an adjacent pod.
He summoned another holographic control panel and opened another suit for her. She stepped into it and lined up her arms and legs as she’d watched Alexander do. “Don’t move,” he said; then he sealed the armor around her. Catalina gasped as the suit squeezed her arms and legs. The pressure wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was disconcerting.
There came a whoosh and then a hiss of air, and suddenly she was staring out through the faceplate of a helmet. Lights came on inside the helmet, illuminating the glass with a bright blue heads-up display (HUD). That type of control interface was already familiar to her from her ARCs, but she didn’t understand any of the information on this HUD—except for the blinking comms symbol, and Alexander’s name, which appeared floating above his head in a bar of green text. She looked around the room and saw more floating names—Councilor Mikail Markov, Lieutenant Desiree Dempsey.
“Why are the comms blinking?” she asked, but her voice didn’t travel beyond the helmet.
Alexander cupped a metal hand to the side of his helmet, and said, “Think or say, activate external speakers.”
She tried that. “Hello?”
He nodded. “Good. Now try walking out of the pod.” He stepped aside and she shuffled out, afraid she would trip and be unable to get back up in the heavy suit, but to her surprise, she could still move easily, as if the suit weighed no more than a few pounds. “You’re a natural,” Alexander said.
Ben and Jessica walked up to them carrying the black boxes she’d seen them withdrawing from the locker when she’d entered the room. “Strap these over your chests,” Ben said, holding one out to Alexander.
“What are they?” he asked, accepting one of the boxes from Ben and awkwardly looping his arms through the straps.
Jessica handed another one to her, and Catalina reached for it with a frown. She had to concentrate to make sure she didn’t miss and accidentally grab the girl’s tiny hand. She’d heard stories about soldiers using exosuits like these in rescue operations only to accidentally injure the people they were trying to rescue.
“Sonar,” Ben explained, replying belatedly to Alexander’s question. “We can use them to detect cloaked Grays or humans. Link them to your suits, and you should be able to see whatever they detect.”
Catalina strapped hers on, wondering how to link it. She tried focusing on the device, and to her surprise a simple dialogue appeared, asking if she wanted to link with an unknown device.
She mentally selected yes, and an echoing pling sounded close beside her ears, followed by a wave of shaded green light that raced outward, crawling over the walls, floor, ceiling, Councilor Markov, Doctor Laskin... and all of the objects in the room. The light briefly illuminated all of the shadows in the room before washing up the far wall and disappearing.
Pling. Another wave of green light rolled out. The same thing happened.
“I didn’t realize we had these,” Commander Johnson said as Jessica passed another device to her.
“We found a way to get them aboard,” Ben explained. “Just in case we ran into the Entity.”
“Beats the hell out of your bat impression,” Remo said.
Ben smirked at that and turned to face the open door of the armory. “Come in Ch-va-la,” he said.
The Gray who’d rescued them came slinking into the armory.
“Please cloak yourself,” Ben said.
Catalina saw the alien vanish. Pling. A green wave of light swept out, and to her surprise, it revealed the Gray clearly when it reached the point where the alien had disappeared. Unlike a flash of real light, there and gone in the blink of an eye, the illumination on her HUD remained, sticking to the Gray like luminous green paint. The color quickly faded until it was a dim green shadow.
Another pling sounded, and another wave swept out, illuminating the Gray brightly once more. Catalina noticed that the alien had suddenly moved a few feet to the left. Confused, she asked about that.
“The light is simulated,” Ben explained. “Sonar bounces sound waves off solid objects and listens for the echo. It has a shorter range in the air than underwater, but it should still work fine for our purposes. The main limitation is that it only updates the locations of objects every couple of seconds, so all you’ll be able to see is the last known location of a given target. You’ll have to anticipate their movements.”
“Better than nothing,” Remo said. “Now what?”
The Gray replied, “R-egg-a ad-ma.”
“Ch-va-la wants you to follow it,” Ben said.
“You understand that thing?” Remo asked.
Ben nodded. “Benevolence uploaded their language to my and Jessica’s brains as part of our mission preparation. Our vocal chords can’t reproduce the sounds they make, but fortunately Ch-va-la understands our language, too.”
“Aha, so where does Ch-va-la want us to follow it?” Alexander asked.
“Back to the harvester.”
“What?!” Catalina exclaimed.
“Bad idea...” Remo added. “How many Grays do you think they can fit on a ship that size? There’s just eight of us. Nine if you count Bug Eyes.”
“The harvester will be almost empty. The Entity needs as much space as possible to pick up and transport billions of people from Earth to their new homes in the Federation. I’m guessing that’s also why they decided to take the Liberty back with them.”
Remo shook his head. “I saw what Esther did to that drone in the med bay. She melted it to slag, and she didn’t even have a weapon!”
“As far as you could tell. There were probably Grays in there with you, cloaked. Their weapons are modified laser welders; they generate a lot of heat.”
“I don’t care who did it or how. The point is that they did.”
“How long did it take to melt the drone?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know, you were the one controlling it.”
Ben nodded. “Ten seconds. That’s how long you have to shoot any Grays you come across before they can incinerate you,” Ben replied.
“Why don’t we just send more drones?” Commander Johnson asked.
“We can’t use them with the harvester jamming our external comms.”
That must be what the blinking comms symbol is about, Catalina thought.
“Everyone ready?” Jessica asked as she came and handed a final sonar box to Councilor Markov and Doctor Laskin. Desiree was helping them get suited up.
“No!” Catalina replied. “I don’t even know how to shoot!”
“Think activate cannons,” Alexander said.
She tried that, and weapon barrels slid out of her forearm gauntlets. She lifted her arms,
rotating them back and forth to examine the weapons. Twin targeting reticles bobbed around her HUD as she moved her arms.
“They’ll lock on automatically,” Alexander explained. You just have to mark a target and point your cannons in that general direction. Think shoot or fire, and the rounds will home in on the target you marked.”
“What if I accidentally shoot one of you?” Catalina asked.
“They won’t lock on to friendlies, so you can’t accidentally shoot us—or yourself,” Alexander explained.
Councilor Markov was busy examining his own guns, waving them around the room. Good thing he can’t shoot us, Catalina thought. “Let’s say we kill all the Grays on board the Harvester,” she said. “Then what?”
“Ch-va-la will take control of it, and we’ll head for the rendezvous that we missed.”
“What about Mars, the Colonies... Earth?” Commander Johnson demanded.
Ben shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do for them.”
Commander Johnson set her jaw. “Then we should go back to Proxima and rescue as many of the crew as we can.”
“That’s even less likely to succeed. As Remo pointed out, there’s just nine of us. If we try to infiltrate Proxima B, we’ll all be captured and killed, and anyone we managed to immunize would suffer the same fate. The only thing we can hope to do is escape.”
“And leave our entire species to go extinct?”
Ben hesitated, looking like he wanted to say something to that, but the Gray spoke first, babbling at them in his stuttering language.
“What’s he saying?” Remo asked.
“It says they also had to run—” The alien went on speaking, and Ben waited to translate. “—but now that we have a vaccine, we can fight back.”
Alexander nodded along with that. “That’s why the Entity wanted to know how you cured us. It wanted to find a way to counter the cure.”
“R-egg-a ad-ma es-a,” Ch-va-la said.
“You have to go now,” Ben said.
“What about you?” Catalina asked.
“There aren’t any suits that will fit Jessica and me. We’ll stay behind until you’ve cleared the way for us.”
Exodus: Book 3 of the New Frontiers Series (A Dark Space Tie-In) Page 18
