Equilibrium of Terror: Part 1 (Splintered Galaxy Book 3)

by Eddie R. Hicks

  A network of rapid transit trams built by Radiance connected the bases and a few small research and mining outposts to the main city. Only one base remained isolated from the city and the rest of the moon for that matter, the UNE black site. It was a small installation built at the top of a small mountain. The official response from the UNE was that it was an experimental weather monitoring station. In reality however, the black site was the prime location for all tests the UNE were making toward its unnamed human psionic program. A program with a questionable future after the Radiance withdrawal, since the UNE relied heavily on their knowledge of psionics and of how to build a facility able to turn potential candidates into psionics and studying how Ella Lynn mysteriously gained psionic powers seemingly overnight.

  … … …

  ►► ESV Winston Churchill, Titan orbit around Saturn

  ► Sol system

  The ESV Winston Churchill entered orbit around Titan as the ESV Wilfrid Laurier, began to make preparations to enter sub light speeds and regroup with the main UNE fleet as ordered. On the flight deck, Gavin floated toward the lone transport that was prepped and ready to take the EDF team toward the UNE black site on Titan’s surface. He entered the transport with a smile aimed toward its pilot Ensign Lu

  “Chambers what are you doing here?” Lu asked him.

  “If it’s alright with you I’ll pilot the transport down.”

  “Oh?”

  “Dr. Lynn and I do go way back from our times at Alpha Centauri, just want to check in and see how she’s holding up.”

  “Whatever floats your boat,” Lu said, unbuckling his seat belt. “But if we run into trouble.”

  “I’ll haul my ass back up don’t you worry, besides I don’t plan on staying long.”

  Lu’s body floated upwards and he pulled himself out of the cockpit then out of the transport. Once he was clear, Gavin signaled to Chris and Sarah to enter. Both wore their EDF protect suits. They floated in as Gavin sat up front shutting the transport doors, and began a pre-flight launch test. He piloted the transport out and away from the Winston Churchill on a course toward Titan, with Saturn and its mighty rings behind them looking back.

  Then he waited.

  And waited.

  Michei teleported aboard as the transport glided closer toward Titan. “I don’t understand how you could walk into combat with these on?” Michei said staring at Chris and Sarah.

  Unbeknown to everyone else, they filed fake reports that Michei had teleported to the Wilfrid Laurier to be recalled along with the Wilfrid Laurier’s shipboard psionic. As far as the Winston Churchill’s crew was concerned he was gone and the teleport along with the sudden drop in psionic activity aboard the Winston Churchill was proof of that. They could search the ship up and down, there would be no signs of him. The Wilfrid Laurier would later argue once the Radiance transport arrived stating they never got him. Michei would be long gone by the time a detailed search begins, and given the current relationships between the UNE and Radiance, with the war going on with the Hashmedai, such a search might never happen.

  “So exactly what will happen if we get caught?” Sarah asked.

  “Caught doing what?” Chris said with a grin. “We’re just heading to Titan as planned.” He pointed to Michei. “Don’t know what the fuck he’s doing here.”

  All four personnel aboard the transport erupted with laugher.

  … … …

  ►► UNE black site, Titan

  ► Sol system

  The transport came to a landing on the one and only landing pad on top of the black site’s rooftops. Everyone placed their helmets back on as Gavin equipped his flight suit and helmet. The air on Titan wasn’t toxic per se, but the chilling minus two-hundred degree temperatures were quite deadly, even to a Hashmedai. Heat and protection from the cold air was needed more than anything as they stepped outside.

  Chris looked up into yellow horizon, and watched almost in a trance as Saturn took up nearly half of the skies. Below that, he saw the rocky surface of the moon and its hydrocarbon lakes, with lights from the main city in the distance. Like the base, the city wasn’t entirely enclosed in a dome, unlike the ones on Mars.

  Gravity on Titan was light, just like the moon around Earth. The four of them crawled out form the transport like the early Apollo astronauts landing on the moon, and walked across the landing pad, toward the airlock. Past the airlock was a small security check point that let them all pass without questions, especially Michei. The staff was expecting them all, including the now rogue Radiance psionic.

  It didn’t take long for them to arrive at Ella’s chamber, jail, prison whatever you want to call it as the black site was by no means a large piece of real-estate. Sliding doors led them into a small room with a computer terminal on the side, and a chamber that resembled a jail cell, complete with a force field keeping Ella inside of it. At least they gave her a comfortable bed to sleep on... and Rubik’s cubes, lots and lots of Rubik’s cubes scattered all over the floor.

  “A moment alone please?” Chris asked the guard and the scientist studying Ella.

  “Of course, sir.” They left.

  Ella paid no mind to them as she placed a completed Rubik’s cube that was hovering in front of her into a neat pile at the side of her cell. They all removed their helmets, unveiling their surprise to their long-lost comrade.

  A tiny smile formed on Ella’s face as she sat up and stepped closer to the force field keeping her in having realized who the four visitors were. “Michei, ya wanker,” she said in her charming Australian accent.

  “Nice to see you again too,” he said.

  Ella looked at Michei up and down. “Radiance isn’t supposed to be here anymore.”

  “And human psionics aren’t supposed to exist,” Michei said, taking a seat at the nearby computer station.

  “Yet here I am.”

  Given Ella’s close contact with the gem and that her mind swapped so frequently with a Hashmedai psionic named Avearan, many of the people studying her concluded that some of Avearan’s gifts somehow etched itself onto Ella’s brain, thus giving her psionic powers. Her imprisonment aboard the Winston Churchill, gave her a first-class ticket to the black site to be tested on further.

  “According to Michei’s reports you managed to retain knowledge from your Hashmedai host,” said Chris.

  “Amongst other things,” Ella said, snapping her fingers.

  The pile of neatly stacked Rubik’s cubes collapsed slowly thanks to the low gravity. Once they were all shattered across the floor, she snapped once more, and they rose back up and formed into the neat pile that was there seconds ago.

  Alright, that was cool. “Even language?” Chris asked.

  She uttered a word in Hashmedain.

  Chris pulled out a holo pad from his side storage slot, his fingers sifted through the files and stopped upon coming across data from the Uranus outpost. “This is the Taxahan dialect. We were hoping you could translate for us.”

  “Avearan’s knowledge of Taxahan was limited,” said Ella. “But yeah, some of those words are recognizable. I’ll need a few.”

  “That’s fine, I wanted to tour this place anyways,” Chris said, then patted Michei on the shoulder. “And make my promised delivery.”

  “Check out the psionic labs if you always wanted to know where most of UNE’s tax income has gone,” Ella said.

  Chris handed the pad to Sarah and exited along with Michei. They took a brief tour of the black site and its four floors. The last section of the site turned out to be the most interesting and as far as Chris was concerned the prime reason the place existed.

  They looked through a glass window and saw a chamber of some sorts, lab workers and construction workers were hard at work applying the finishing touches to some expensive looking equipment. A row of pods was lined up, they almost looked like cryostasis pods as they had a place for someone to lie down and rest. In the middle of the room was a cylindrical apparatus with white mist flowing
away from it, at the base of it were several holographic screens and interfaces.

  “It looks exactly like a psionic creation center,” Michei said, after finishing his observation.

  “Creation, uh.”

  A woman wearing a long white lab coat and a turtle neck sweater underneath was inside the chamber. Her blonde hair was tied into a pony tail as she interfaced with the large holo pad she had in her hands, clearly overseeing the project. She turned around staring at Michei, and muttered some words to another worker then exited the chamber to meet them.

  “Miriam König I take it?” Michei asked her as approached.

  “That is correct,” she said in her German accent.

  “Staff Sergeant Chris Boyd, Extrasolar Defense Force,” he said, shaking her hand. “As promised here he is.”

  “And as promised,” she said, grinning at Michei. “Spend as much time as you need with Lynn.”

  … … …

  “I’ll try and be quick with the translation, love,” Ella said to Sarah as she reviewed the data on the holo pad. “Knowing König, she’s gonna be asking y’all to leave so that she can continue with her tests.”

  “Take all the time you need, we cut a deal with her.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Plan was to talk with you for a bit, get what intel we needed then jet. But with the Radiance pull out, the work in this place hit a bit of a snag.”

  “Aye, I heard about it myself, with no Radiance psionics to help them get a better understanding on how the psionic brain works all their work shifted to me,” Ella looked up toward Sarah and Gavin. “So, what deal did you cut? ‘Cause last time I checked, I was their last hope for this project.”

  “Michei, he’s going to hide up here and help them out,” said Gavin. “In return, we get to spend more time with you, and if things get really bad, may have to draft you into psionic duties.”

  “Crikey! You can’t be serious?”

  “We’re not going to win this war without psionics,” Sarah said.

  “Things must be worse than I thought if command is pullin’ a stunt like this.”

  Sarah snickered. “Command doesn’t know of this, this was our call, our deal. Only the people down here in this base know of this. With that said, let’s keep this a secret.”

  “Sure, why not, this place is full of ‘em anyway,” Ella said.

  Sarah crossed her arms as she asked. “What kind of secrets?”

  Ella’s face twisted as she stood and stepped closer to the force field. Sarah and Gavin did the same, ready to take in what Ella was going to say.

  … … …

  “And there, that room,” said Michei, pointing to an adjacent chamber with rows of operating tables and construction equipment. “Look at all that. Are you setting up to make an operation room to install the cybernetic upgrades on psionics?”

  “I guess Radiance was planning to stay so long that they needed a place for future psionics to be trained,” said Chris.

  “This place was built to create an army of human psionics, not Radiance,” König revealed.

  “I get the need to look into human psionics now that Ella seems to have developed those skills but,” Chris paused as he considered his next words, “this place has clearly been around for a while. Ella’s powers weren’t discovered until recently, unless ya’ll been holding out on us.”

  “Well.” König flipped her fingers across her holo pad, “In the aftermath of the invasion of Earth, a lab of alien origin was discovered in Los Angeles.”

  “Really?”

  “It was run by several Linl who posed as humans prior to the war. As time went on it was discovered they conducted a lot of studies on many humans and our connection to psionics.” Both Chris and Michei remained silent as they both faced König in shock. “Amongst other things.”

  “I’ve heard about this lab,” Michei said. “It was run by the heretics.”

  “We took their equipment, translated their studies and used it as a basis to build what you now see before you.” König’s hand gestured toward the walls and ceilings. “Once the Radiance fleet arrived we proposed that they help us continue to build this place with the technology they had. We told them it was going to be used as a place for them to train new psionics, since it was clear at the time Radiance’s presence in the system was going to be long term with a chance of humanity joining the union.”

  “But in secret you took their tech and knowledge combined with what you found in the lab to build a psionic creation,” Chris said. “A training facility for humans only.”

  “Radiance had no idea.” She laughed. “The only thing that prevented us from pushing forward was the lack of a basis. The chambers you see work like the Radiance counterparts, they rewire the brain to allow for psionic thought process to exist. But it’s hard to program the computers to do that when you don’t know what a psionic mind is supposed to look like, especially a human one. Until now.”

  “Ella.”

  “Her discovery was nothing short of a miracle. With the studies we’ve conducted we are close to allowing human trial runs for the project. With any luck, we could be mass producing an army of human psionics soon. With Michei here, we’ll now have a basis for how to design the implants and implement basic training with his experience.”

  Chris grimaced while Michei’s body language became uncomfortable. The deal was for Michei to stay to help them better understand psionics, neither of them knew it was going to be in this manner.

  … … …

  “Are you for fucking real?” Gavin roared to Ella.

  “Yep, this is why I’m not moping on the floor during my imprisonment here. Once König has what she needs from me, I’ll be free to go.” Sarah’s face grew slightly pale. “Something wrong?” Ella asked her.

  “A lab run by the order operating out of LA during the war,” Sarah muttered.

  “And before it, yeah,” said Ella.

  “Holy shit,” Sarah said then faced Gavin. “Chambers, remember Hendrix and Nelson?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Remember that story Chloe and I told you about? When we encountered a Linl trying to take us captive in a hotel in LA? Trying to force us into cryo pods?”

  “Don’t tell me there’s a connection,” Gavin said slowly.

  Ella pointed to a workstation behind them. “That computer in the corner has unrestricted access to this facilities database, including the LA lab source material.”

  They both sat down at the workstation in question. Ella was right. Sarah could gain access too. Her hands sifted through several holoscreens as she began to search for all the information pertaining to the LA order lab. After a five-minute search, a projection appeared. It contained close up security camera footage of two familiar people.

  “Oh my god,” Gavin said. “I know them.”

  “And I remember her,” Sarah said, then paused trying to remember the name of the Asian woman in one of the projections. “Dianna, right?”

  Gavin nodded, Dianna Lee, family friend, doctor at Cedar-Sinai and worked part time at some institute for special needs children. “Yeah, and this guy here.” Gavin pointed to an old man wearing a Cedar-Sinai doctor’s outfit. “That’s Dr. Jakins, he was examining Anna when she was pregnant.”

  “Looks like he was doing a shit load more than that,” Sarah said as she interacted with the wrist computer of her protect suit. “Fuck, I’m downloading this.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the best idea, love,” Ella bellowed toward them from her cell.

  “There are files here about Anna,” Gavin said while his face leant in closer to the projection. Red light beamed across his face as the projection’s window switched to another picture. “And that gem.”

  … … …

  “Oh, before I forget,” König said to Chris and Michei. “The pilot you came down here with? Chambers, Gavin Chambers correct?”

  “Yeah, that’s his name,” Chris said.

  König’s fingers swiped an
d tapped through several windows on her holo pad. A photo of Gavin’s deceased wife appeared. “Any relationship to Anna Chambers?”

  “Yeah. I remember him talking about her a lot, especially her death at Cedar-Sinai,” said Chris. “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, no reason.”

  … … …

  ►► Scathing Hand, on approach to Saturn

  ► Sol system

  Two Hashmedain destroyers the Scathing Hand, Night Hunter and Shade Flare, a carrier flew toward Saturn at sub light speeds, more specifically its moon Titan upon realizing a lone human battleship remained in orbit for a while all alone in the night of space. Their target however, wasn’t the human ship, though it would pose an issue once they were detected. Their primary target was the small human settlement on the moon and the secret base on the surface.

  Captain T’esih used her hand to nudge away the drink floating next to her, an herbal nerve tonic. It was the same drink her mother would always prepare for her when she was a young child in preparation for her future role in life as an officer in the imperial navy. T’esih glimpsed at the forward windows of the bridge of the Scathing Hand while Saturn appeared as the dominant object in sight. A small yellow ball surrounded by enormous rings. “Are you sure this is it?” T’esih asked.

  “According to the data package we got from the scout ship, yes. That moon is the location,” said her communication officer, Delin.

  “Defenses?”

  “Two human attack ships are in the sector,” said the Scathing Hand’s shipboard psionic, Martop. “One seems to be leaving. On the surface, there are several planetary guns and fighter bays.” He opened his eyes having broken out of his ESP trance. “There is nothing else that I could detect.”

  T’esih floated back into her commander’s chair and strapped her seat belt on. “Let us strike,” she said enthusiastically while a hologram appeared in front of her, giving her a three-dimensional tactical layout of the area.

  “Captain. The admiral—”

  “Is not here to lead this campaign as he should be,” said T’esih. “I’m in command until then. If this facility remains active, think about what it could do to the war effort? Radiance has withdrawn their psionics so now is the time to strike while the human ships are partly blind!”