by Quincy Allen
“It was considered a delicacy in my homeland back when I lived there. I can’t say if it still is, but I developed a taste for it that I never could give up.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with that. I have a few appetites of my own,” he said, and then dug into his steak.
The barmaid returned with the drinks, setting them quietly at the edge of the table. For a long time, Jake and Corina sat silently, holding each other’s hand across the table, searching within for the right words. And then he told her his entire life story, something he’d never done before.
And at the time, it didn’t occur to him that she said very little about herself.
Chapter Fourteen
The Secret of Roswell
“That thing is still one of the most amazing applications of engineering and magic I have ever seen.”
~ Captain Jane Wilson
“Come on, Jake!” Skeeter shouted over her shoulder. She dashed from bright morning sunlight into the purple and green tinted shadows that lay beyond an archway of ruddy stone blocks.
Each block rising above them held deeply carved sigils, as if they told a hero’s tale in some ancient language. Fifteen-foot-tall reinforced iron doors stood open, beckoning them into the base of the shield tower.
“Don’t touch anything!” Jake shouted after her a bit wearily. He’d been up all night talking with—or was it to— Corina.
There was something odd about the whole thing. He felt totally at ease with her, but as his thoughts mulled over the conversation, it occurred to him that he didn’t know much more about her now than he had before. She’d talked about Asia and then India. She mentioned cities across the Middle East and Europe. But all he really knew was that she lived her life on the run, hiding at the edge of civilization with little or no contact with other humans as she moved from one place to the next. She hadn’t provided him any details, and when the sun threatened to breach the eastern horizon, she was gone.
“She’s got a lot of gumption,” Forsythe said with a chuckle.
“Hunh?” Jake blurted, pulled abruptly out of his reverie. After two hours of sleep and three cups of Forsythe’s infamous “up-and-at-’em” coffee, he figured there was one hell of a nap in his future, right after the buzz inside his skull wore off. But he wanted to see the shield tower almost as much as Skeeter did.
“You have no idea,” Cole replied. “Right, Jake?”
“Yeah. She’s hell on wheels.”
“You okay?” Cole asked, laying a gentle hand on Jake’s arm. They stopped at the bottom of the steps to the tower entrance.
“I’m fine.” Jake nodded and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Short night.”
Cole tightened his lips to a thin line, clearly not happy with whatever he assumed Jake had done with Corina.
“Oh really?” Forsythe asked. The implication of Jake’s impropriety with a fine Lady came through loud and clear. “I gotta ask you, Jake,” Forsythe continued quickly, “how in the hell did you ever catch the eye of a woman who is miles and miles outside your means? And spending the night with her?”
“It ain’t like that,” Jake replied a bit defensively.
“So you spent the night with her, but you didn’t sleep with her.” Cole stated. Disbelief, thick as molasses, filled his voice, along with a healthy dose of worry just beneath the surface.
“We never left our table.” Jake assured him. “We were just talking.”
“I can vouch for that,” Forsythe chimed in.
Cole’s surly tone didn’t budge an inch. “So, do you know more about her now than you did before we left San Fran?” he asked.
Jake hesitated, knowing what was running through Cole’s head. “Not really,” he finally replied. “A few bits and pieces.”
Cole shook his head.
Forsythe didn’t miss the fact that there was more between the lines than just a night out with a beautiful woman.
“C’mon,” Jake added as he headed for the archway. “Let’s get a look at this place.”
“After you,” Forsythe gestured for them to enter the building. “You boys are in for a real treat.”
They entered a chamber large enough to hold four or five wagons. A tall, stern-looking woman with sharp features and spindly limbs sat behind a simple desk, her bony hands resting upon a short stack of tan binders.
Rather than the colorful flair Jake had seen around the city, the woman wore a simple white shirt buttoned tightly at collar and cuff. A tight black vest imprisoned the blouse, apparently as a means of punishing the miscreant garment beneath. She’d pulled her mahogany hair back tightly and confined it to a large, flawless bun. Not a single hair dared stray from the steel-smooth coif she so diligently worked to maintain.
Beside her stood a lanky fellow in identical clothing. But where her attire and appearance was sharp, deliberate, crisp, his seemed loose and comfortable, as if he were eternally on holiday while she never strayed from her duties. The familial resemblance between them was easy to spot, and the smile he gave them, a stark contrast to the thin line of her pale lips, was genuine.
Beyond the siblings stood a set of large double doors made from dark metal. Two hulking guards—dressed in the varied attire of Roswellian militia that Jake had come to expect—bracketed the doorway. They each held rifles reminiscent of chainguns, but clearly of a different design than Szilágyi’s deadly weapons, and the guards also had heavy sabers sheathed at their hips.
The architecture of the room suggested the interior of the shield tower mimicked the ringed design of the city, made up of concentric rings and partitions. Jake spotted Skeeter off to his right, examining part of what gave the room its light.
A series of half-spheres embedded into the stone surface ran along the outer wall at floor level, each one roughly a foot across. They glowed with a blue-green inner light, and the patterns within suggested they might be made of massive turquoise gemstones. Running above each stone, also embedded into the wall, rose large copper pipes with sigils cut through them, exposing a shifting pattern of deep purple light within.
Skeeter stood, her nose a hair’s breadth from one of the pipes, peering deeply into the glowing runes through the complex ocular she kept with her for just such occasions. The headgear was a tangle of widgets, wires, and doodads, with lights and lenses on swing-arms that allowed her to “change the fractions,” as she like to tell Jake when he was foolish enough to ask.
“Come on, Skeeter,” Jake said with a tired smile. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
“I ain’t touched it, I swear!” she blurted.
The woman behind the desk remained a statue, but the man chuckled. “He’s right, you know,” he called out to Skeeter. “There’s much more for you to see … up above, anyway.”
Skeeter turned to face him.
“I’m Leonel,” he added with another friendly smile. “And this is my sister Liona. We run this facility.”
Everyone approached the desk, and Jake held out his hand.
“I’m Jake—”
“Lasater,” Liona bit off the word like hardtack. “Mister Jacob Joshua Lasater.” There was no mistaking that she had an axe to grind.
“Jacob?” Cole asked.
“Joshua?” Skeeter added.
Both of them were smiling.
“Shut up,” Jake grumbled at both of them. He’d never liked either name. With the help of his brother, he had adopted the name Jake at a very early age, and his brother used to call him J.J., but only when nobody else was around.
Forsythe knew about both names. He also knew how much they bothered Jake. He covered his mouth to hide the smile, but there was no hiding the glint in his eyes.
“Where is the man in black?” Liona asked. With a practiced motion as fast as an adder, she flicked open a folder before her, glanced at a page within, and snapped the folder closed. “Mister Ghiss, I believe.”
“He’s back at the Mare,” Jake replied. He’d had his coffee with the mercenary before he left, exchanging only a f
ew words. “I figured you wouldn’t let him in here.”
“You were correct,” she said. “I must tell you, I find myself particularly disquieted by the thought of letting the three of you in here, but others vouched for you, so my hands are tied.” Jake, Cole, and Skeeter all looked at Forsythe. Liona raised an eyebrow. “Mister Forsythe does not have the authority to get you in here, but there are others who feel you can be trusted.”
“Which is why I get to take you up the tower,” Leonel added cheerfully, motioning them towards the door. “So, if you will follow me, we can get you a look at Roswell’s greatest achievement.”
Skeeter practically ran to step in behind Leonel, while Jake, Forsythe, and Cole ambled along. Leonel nodded to the guards, and one of them knocked on the metal door. Metal slid on metal, followed by a pair of loud clanks. With a hiss of steam, the doors swung outward on large pistons at the top.
The interior was similar to the room Jake had passed through to get to the command deck of the Dragun, with the addition of two heavily armed guards just inside the doors. It was a kill-room plain and simple, with a series of gun ports fifteen feet off the ground and metal walls to improve ricochets. A simple spiral staircase rose at the far end of the room, with a small metal platform at the top that widened before a heavy metal door.
Leonel led the way up the stairs, and when they got to the top, he stepped up to a small plate set into the wall next to the door and turned a series of five small tumblers with numbers etched into them. Making sure to block everyone’s view, he turned each. A soft click followed by another loud clank prompted the door to swing open. It exposed a bright, purplish glow beyond, accompanied by a nearly subsonic hum that Jake felt in his teeth.
Leonel spun the tumblers quickly before leading them in. “Welcome to the central core,” he said, raising his arm with a flourish as he gave a short bow.
“Holy hell,” Cole blurted as he followed Skeeter in.
Jake stepped in and couldn’t believe his eyes. He realized that the copper pipes they had seen in the first chamber entered the core through the wall above their heads, all converging at the center like glowing spokes on a wagon wheel. But there were hundreds of them.
The catwalk they stood upon ringed the chamber, with metal doors like the one behind them spaced about every fifty feet. Jake looked up, and through gaps in the pipes he spotted four more catwalks above, the uppermost more than a hundred feet above them.
The center of the core was what held his attention, though. Four conduits rose straight up, identical to those running above their heads, save for one exception: they were two meters across, and the light pouring from their runes was so intense that it hurt to look at them, as if the columns contained the energy of some strange, purple sun. At the very center of the core was a central column Jake surmised held a spiral staircase; it was just large enough to hold one the same size as what they’d used to enter the core.
At the base of each was a large, crystalline sphere that held bright swirls of pulsing energy that seemed to feed the columns.
“What the hell powers this thing?” Jake asked.
Leonel opened his mouth to speak.
“It’s aether, Jake,” Skeeter injected with awe. “But it’s raw … pure … not like the stuff I draw out for use in the Thumper, which comes in dribbles, by the way.” Skeeter stared at Leonel with wide eyes. “The amount of energy flowing through these conduits is staggering.” She cocked her head to the side. “How do you contain it? What’s the source? How is this even possible?” She rattled the questions off like bullets from a chaingun.
Forsythe turned surprised eyes towards Skeeter, while Leonel looked both surprised and impressed.
“Well, my answer was going to be that it’s a secret, but the young lady has quite correctly deduced the truth He gave her an embarrassed smile. “As to your questions, I’m afraid I can’t answer them without revealing state secrets.”
“I understand,” she replied, but she didn’t hide her disappointment.
“Besides,” he added with a smile, “Liona would have my head if I said a word about it.” Everyone laughed as he turned and walked along the catwalk along the perimeter of the core. “As you can see, the energy flows through the conduits and is ultimately channeled high above us into the emitters you undoubtedly saw during your flight in.”
“Forgive me for asking,” Jake said, “and maybe you can’t answer this, but all these pipes look pretty exposed. I was impressed by those rooms before, and all the reinforced doors and gun ports and all. But a determined force could get by that if enough of them really wanted to.” Jake eyed the copper pipes and crystal spheres as they continued along the catwalk.
“That’s a good question, Mister Lasater. And it’s actually one I can answer.” He stopped and turned. Can I assume that’s a standard issue army revolver at your hip?” he asked, then pointed at Jake’s right holster.
“Yessir.”
Leonel smiled mischievously. “Shoot it.” He waved his hand at the interior of the core. “Anywhere at all.”
In answer, Jake raised an eyebrow, a dubious look on his face. He didn’t relish the thought of all that energy coming out at once if he blew a hole in the copper.
“Trust me,” Leonel added. “Anywhere at all, as much as you like.”
“If you say so,” Jake said as he stepped up to the edge of the catwalk. He still looked doubtful, but he was willing to see what happened next. For a moment he considered using the Peacekeeper, but seeing as it was enchanted and had killed a werewolf, a demon, and whatever Quinn had been back in Denver, he didn’t want to risk it. He pulled the Officer’s Colt free with a smooth motion, fanned the hammer quickly, firing once at the crystal spheres below, twice at a central column, and once at a smaller copper pipe above.
Every bullet hit its mark, but there was no twang of metal ricocheting, only a strangely loud DUHWIP! It was as if a raindrop hit the surface of a calm pool, only amplified a hundred times. The air around the impact rippled like water as well. Everyone watched the flattened lead slugs fall to the floor with dull clatters.
“It absorbed it,” Skeeter said, stunned. “It soaked up all of the kinetic energy.”
“The what?” Cole asked.
Skeeter shook her head and then half-turned to Cole. “It’s a theory Thomson and Kelvin put forth a while back.”
“Who?” Jake asked.
“It doesn’t matter who they are. I read through their stuff when I was at Klattersnap’s, back before I met you guys.” She stared at Leonel again. “Does the kinetic energy get transferred into the energy stream?” she asked.
Leonel said nothing, but the genuinely impressed smile he gave her was answer enough. “As you can see,” he added, changing the subject, “everything within the core is quite safe.” He turned and continued along the catwalk. With a wave at the complex device around them, he added, “It can even take explosives.”
Jake believed him, but he also knew that enough explosives could solve just about any problem, if applied both carefully and generously.
Leonel finished walking halfway round the core to a catwalk that stretched into the central column and yet another armored door. He crossed over and spun another series of tumblers.
A metal spiral staircase ran both up and down the interior column. With no gap between the stairs and the wall, Jake couldn’t begin to estimate how far down it went, but he assumed the core ran to the top, or near to it.
Leonel stepped onto the stairs and started upwards.
“What’s down below,” Skeeter asked as she stepped onto the stairs.
“Nothing I’m at liberty to discuss,” was the easy reply. Leonel didn’t look back, but he raised his voice and kept on in a conversational tone. “In fact, in that part of the facility, the standing order is to shoot first and ask questions after the autopsy.”
“Don’t get lost, Skeeter,” Jake chimed in as he mounted the stairs.
“Indeed,” Leonel emphasized. “The i
nner workings of the tower are closely guarded. The three of you should feel privileged that you were granted such a tour.”
“We surely appreciate it,” Cole said.
“Absolutely.”
The next turn around the stairs exposed the first doorway out of the column. It had the same tumbler panel as all the others, but Leonel had not even hesitated near it.
“We’ll be going all the way to the top,” he called over his shoulder. “This and the next two doors are off limits to visitors. The fourth, however, leads out onto the upper observation deck that surrounds the tower.”
“Must be a hell of a view from up there,” Jake called up.
“It is.” Leonel kept climbing, and Jake was grateful for the mechanical legs lifting him up the stairs. Cole and Skeeter were both in excellent shape, but it was a straight-up climb with full breakfasts in their bellies.
They clomped and clanked up the stairs, the only other sound that of heaving breathing that grew increasingly labored, but neither Cole nor Skeeter said a word. The two of them were tough as nails, and Jake knew a hundred feet of stairs was just another day.
They reached the top, and the stairs opened up onto a small platform where two doors stood at right angles to each other. The left-hand door was made of the same dark metal as the others, but the frame extended further out and the door itself seemed heavier, more massive somehow. To emphasize the point, the tumbler panel to the right of the door had eight tumblers rather than the four securing the previous doors. The right-hand door, however, stood open and let in a dust-speckled wash of sunlight stirred by a cool morning breeze.
Leonel stepped through the doorway and bowed slightly, gesturing toward a western horizon full of low rocky hills. “Here we are,” Leonel said with a smile. “Welcome to the best view in Roswell.”
“I’d forgotten,” Cole said as he walked across the deck to the railing. He raised the brim of his hat slightly and stared where Jake knew Cole’s mother lived on a farm north of the city. There were mounted binoculars around the perimeter, and positioned at every third one stood one or two of the Roswell militia, some peering through the binoculars, some talking with their compatriots. It felt casual, as if they stood up here every day on a duty that few felt was truly necessary. Small panels had been mounted about every thirty feet along the wall of the tower.
