Mission: Blackguard Conspiracy

by V. A. Jeffrey

  “So, some kind of communication is going on between this cube and some entity at or near the center. Similar to what Will's red wire is picking up. If Will is picking up something similar, it's a very high level alien communication. Between a first order mech planted here in the city or somewhere on a gorgon or. . .maybe even a hive ship.”

  “Hive ships are in a galaxy far, far, away.”

  “Yeah, but gorgons are in this one,” I said. I felt a frosty shiver crawl up my spine.

  “I wonder what makes the actual convention center site look like a dead spot.”

  “Some kind of ghosting technology perhaps?”

  “That actually exists? You've seen it with your own eyes?”

  “I have. They have to be or more than hackers would be picking up the signal. They are good at hiding in plain sight, Chip. Besides that they've infiltrated many areas of human society. They are working to hide what they're doing and they've been here for a very long time. They look exactly like you and me. Looks like it's time to check things out around there. It's possible that they might be able to track this cipher.” I wondered if the people following me were really tracking the cube. I rubbed my hair and forehead, thinking.

  “Can I go with you?” asked Chip.

  “Sure. But be careful. They're planning something big on Halloween at the convention center.”

  “The Sci-Tech con?”

  “Yes. And they have good reason to block signals. I just wonder how is it we can pick them up?”

  “Well, we do have access to forbidden alien technology that can pick up the signal. No one else does.” He turned back to his screens.

  “Ah, here's something. The magic of fast technology. Fischer just got back to me. According to him, the signal message coming from the cube is in that song-like language, remember?”

  “Gymori.”

  “What?”

  '”It's called Gymori. It's a dead alien language. It's used only among specialty professions and I guess for encrypting and decrypting.”

  “How in the blazes did you know that?” asked Chip.

  “On one of my missions, out there, I met someone who told me about it.”

  “An alien?”

  “Actually, no. He was human.”

  “That is fascinating.”

  “Yeah.” I left out the part where this same guy died a horrible death trying to help me escape a horrible death.

  “Where in the world are you going to get a key for this thing?”

  “I don't know yet.”

  “I'll check it out for you on Dappa.” I doubted I'd find the answer there. My mind was whirling. I was going to need Diamond soon. If anyone on Earth I knew could find out who had a key to this thing it would be Diamond Dog. Maybe. I hadn't heard from him in a while.

  I thought of messaging Genevieve if I couldn't find him.

  We both jumped into Chip's tiny two-seater speeder and were off to downtown Seaport.

  Technically, this side of the city, or southern Seaport, was still called Portland by the natives. Northern Seaport was often still called Seattle.

  “It's kind of late. You're sure your wife doesn't mind?” asked Chip.

  “Oh, she won't mind,” I said. Right now I was in the doghouse and she was as cold to me as the chilly October fog. I doubted it mattered.

  I took out my wrist com-link. and pinged Diamond's number. I slipped out the earpiece from my pocket and stuck it in my ear. No answer.

  “Who're we calling?”

  “Diamond. Goes with me on missions.” No voice mail service picked up either. For some reason, he was refusing to answer his calls. Frustrated, I pinged Jerome. His voice mail service picked up.

  “Jerome, it's Bob. Listen. I'm trying to get in contact with Diamond. If you know where he is please tell him to contact me. It's important.” Another enthusiastic commercial announcing the Sci-Tech convention and the stargate came on. Besides driving me nuts, it was now a dark and ominous thing to me.

  “Chip, would you mind switching to another feed?”

  “Sure thing.” He switched it to an electro-jazz feed currently playing a tune by Quantic.

  Chip took me around the several spots where Will had detected activity signals and then we came to one of the landing pads at Nadine's, a popular sports bar nestled in the food court Column across the skywalk from the convention center. The Column was a skyscraper dedicated to food stalls and restaurants. Chip settled the speeder on a landing bay and taxied into the parking lot, row five, orange section. After taking out his card and swiping it across a scanner to pay for parking he got out a data pad with the Signifier program loaded on it and brought up the screen with the red hub of activity lit up.

  “All in this area and then it stops rather abruptly right at the convention center.” I glanced at the pad.

  “If there's any luck, we're looking at some type of shield or ghosting technology being used in the convention center, on the gate,” I said, feeling pretty sure of myself. Chip gave me a quizzical look. We got out and went to the tube lobby, jumped in a tube with a large crowd of waiting people and went down several levels. We were now at mid-level traffic. There was traffic above and below us.

  “So what exactly are we looking for, Bob?”

  “Well, we aren't looking for anything that we would recognize yet. It's just exploration. More like getting a sense of things first.” That's the kind of guy I was anyway. A gut reaction kind of guy. Chip wasn't. He analyzed things first. But he knew me pretty well.

  To be honest, my alien sixth sense was strong now and I knew better than to ignore it even if others might have thought it silly. As I reached out I could feel the presence of them in the area. A large presence of them. But why the dead area here? Whatever shield they were using must have been very powerful. The gate was hiding in plain sight, just like a Trojan Horse. Any communications or alien signals going back and forth from this area, from the gate, was hidden from just about everyone unless you were actually looking for them – and that meant you had to know that aliens were here on Earth.

  Around the other side of the center were a large congregation of protestors. Police were gathering there as well. Vartan was true to her word.

  “What a nuisance!” grumbled Chip.

  “They're doing their part, Chip. Most of them don't realize it but they are actually there to cause a huge distraction from the real plan. There's very good reason for them being here. This planet is in trouble if this convention goes ahead as scheduled.” I lowered my voice. “These guys are a diversion.” But the armed police coming in had me a little worried. I hoped this wouldn't get violent.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “I have a way inside to have a look. Let's stay in contact through com-link.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I'm taking a look inside. I want you to monitor any changes on your end to the area and what they look like on your data pad,” I said, searching my mini-data pad for the blueprints and notes. “If anything looks weird, text me.”

  “What's that?” asked Chip, pointing at the screen on my pad.

  “My way inside.” Chip gave me a dubious look.

  “I'll meet you at Nadine's later. Oh, and Chip, when you get back home I want you to go to Dappa and find out from the people on its networks any alien activity on Earth in recent years. I want to know who else on Earth knows of their existence. We need to start banding together.”

  “Sure thing!” I sprinted off as Chip turned toward the bar. In case anything happened I didn't want Chip to be in the middle of it.

  My senses were reaching, touching feeling. I was new at this and it was almost overwhelming. I made my way back inside the parking lot, this time, to the ground floor, walking until I finally found the back of the convention center inside a part of the lot adjacent to the main parking lot. It was dimmer here. I wondered about cameras but someone else had been through here, another agent of Vartan's and smoothed the way for me. Evidently he or s
he had gotten inside without incident.

  I found the door, a large metal plate in the ground. I waited for a couple to get out of their car and leave the parking lot, going upstairs and then I made my way to the door, looking around, peeking over my shoulder and then ahead. I saw no one but there was enough noise surrounding the lot that I didn't have much time. I felt around between the crack between the door and the ground feeling for a bit of give. Hearing footsteps, I quickly jumped up and went to the stairwell pretending to look at something on my mini pad. Two young women came by, talking excitedly and went inside the lift tube, their hands filled with shopping bags. Looking around the lot, when I saw that it was clear I went back to the door and pried it open. Darkman didn't lie. It was damned heavy! I nearly dropped it back into the ground but strained even harder when I felt the door lift open higher. Getting it open far enough to get inside, I crawled in and tried to let the door close slowly but it dropped down shutting a little more loudly than I would have liked. I was now inside the cab and it was pitch black. I felt for my mini flashlight and turned it on and switched the light to bright.

  Inside the air was as dry and musty as a forgotten tunnel or shaft would be. From what I remembered, it was sitting in a vertical shaft. I stopped, hearing movement just above. Someone was walking right across the metal door. I fixed the light to the top. Only the barest shaft of light escaped into the pitch darkness of the cab. After hearing the footsteps move away, I got to work searching for a control panel of some sort. There was an emergency panel in one of the corners but any power source it was once attached to was shut down or detached long ago. Bending down in a left-hand corner I found a gray box, flipped open the door and there it was. A family of spiders had made it their home. I slid the levers up and down, no movement. I was going to have to go down the shaft, which I didn't want to do. I fixed the light along the floor and soon found what I needed. The previous agent had apparently cut a man-sized hole in the bottom of the cab floor with a blow torch. The metal piece cut out of the floor was still partially covering the hole. I shifted the metal square piece out of the way and shined my light down the shaft. It didn't seem that far down but it was dim. More light in the lift shaft than in the cab but that wasn't saying much. I attached the light to my jacket and lowered myself down the bottom of the cab.

  “Hold together, you hear me? Don't fall on me or this is all over!” I said to the cab as I found the chains attached and grabbed onto them. It was indeed nearly an ancient thing as I didn't think modern lifts had pulleys and chains or worked through hydraulics anymore.

  I swung myself between two chains to steady myself and began climbing down. I felt the fine dust of grit and dust motes pittering down on me from above making me sneeze. And heard some flying creature race across the shaft, its wings brushing past my ear. A rather large something with an odd flying pattern.

  “Bloody hell!” My voice reverberated disturbingly loud throughout the shaft. I tried not to concentrate on what it was but I was sure it wasn't a bird. I slipped and felt myself fall, catching myself about twenty feet down, entangling myself in the chains. Sighing and getting my bearings I carefully started making my way down again. Again, I felt something brush past my head and I tried to swat away my winged attacker. Unfortunately, I found that there was now more than one creature fluttering around my head. I got a whiff of a fetid odor, something rotten in the air. I felt something settle on my head and I smacked it with all my might. There was a high pitched squeak and the thing fell, fluttering down the air shaft. As I continued down the stench became more powerful. In fact, it was nearly overwhelming, so much so I wanted to vomit. I soon found the grisly answer to the question in my mind as I stopped climbing and flashed my light beneath me. There was a corpse down below impaled on a pole at the bottom of the shaft. The guy that came through here before me. It had to be. I thought with dismay. I struggled to gain my bearings again and through the sickening stench, I continued my journey down to the first underground floor when I heard the last thing I wanted to hear. Fear jabbed at me like a spear.

  “A jet pack would be real nice right about now!” I said, wanting to kick myself for not bringing one. But jet packs brought a lot of attention. Especially the attention of the authorities.

  The noise was the freight cab. Somehow it had dislodged itself and had slid a few feet down while I was still hanging from the chains.

  “Hot damn!” It slid another few feet as I began sliding more quickly down the chains. I nearly slipped off and lost my grip from the chains. My hands were growing tired and they were aching. I wrapped my legs around the chains to steady myself, looking up at the dark flat bottom that looked like a massive sledgehammer and would have the same effect should it land on me.

  “Why me? Why?” But the smell of putrefaction brought me back to my senses. You're lucky Bob! The first guy that smoothed the way for you to get in here is rotting at the bottom of the shaft!

  I hung there for minutes that felt like hours, my arms and hands straining from holding up my body weight. I tried my best to shift my weight to my legs by lodging them and securing my feet against the chains. Hanging there in the odd silence I felt something. As if something invisible shifted. It was a nearly imperceptible sound but it was there. Like some distant, ominous vast force shifting slightly every few seconds. It was hard to describe but it was frightening to me. Like a vast timepiece shifting, ticking. It had to be the gate. Then I heard another metal groan and, this one was much closer.

  I climbed and slid down as quickly as I could just as the cab began to groan like a monster from the deep. I saw a fire escape bolted to the shaft wall. I started rocking back and forth as hard as I could to swing my way towards the wall, as the cab was shifting and groaning. I swung and flung myself with all my might towards the fire escape, grabbed hold of one of the rungs and clasped my body to the fire escape climbed up just in time for the cab to come flying down past me as I jumped onto the doorway and flattened myself against the exit doors to the UL1 floor. I felt the wind of the cab as it heaved down nearly to the bottom floor. Closing my eyes and stopping to catch my breath I finally turned around slowly and carefully and faced the door. Trembling, I took out my flashlight again and examined the door. It was two doors that slid apart. I pressed my ear to the cool metal to listen for anything on the other side. Besides the beating of my own heart I heard nothing. Satisfied, I took out my slim tool satchel, mounted the magnetic round inside the sliver between the lift doors and then got out the digital jack and turned it on and began pressing the lever down as I set to work prying a small opening between the doors. I hoped to God it was powerful enough to get me in. At first nothing seemed to happen. I tried again and saw the doors tremble slightly and then after about five minutes which seemed like an eternity the doors moved about an inch apart. Through the crack I saw a darkened, empty hallway. There didn't appear to be anyone on the other side. I re-calibrated the jack and repositioned it again to fit the doors that were now slightly ajar. I began to work the jack again, this time more forcefully. I got it about an inch wider apart and that seemed all the jack could handle. I put the jack away back in the tool satchel and began using the force of my body to try and pry the doors further apart. By jiggling and pushing against them I managed to get them to move apart further just enough to try and squeeze myself through. My head was too big and so I squeezed the rest of me through the doors first and then by positioning the bulk of my body against the doors now that it was basically stuck between them, forced them open even wider. If anyone came down here now I'd have a hard time trying to explain myself.

  I dislodged the right door and managed to get my head inside, scraping it against the doors. I carefully squeezed the rest of myself through the doors, feeling elated and suddenly fearful. I glanced around the darkened corridor and then looked for an exit. I found one at the end of the corridor up a small flight of steps. I kept to the hidden, employee corridors, stairs, and lifts, avoiding the public ones where security was buzz
ing everywhere.

  There were a few people milling about. The main auditorium doors were closed. It all seemed too normal. Which really got my hackles up. I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. Chip was pinging me. I answered.

  “Yeah?”

  “You in yet?”

  “Only just. What's going on?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing. Something shifted right there in the central area, right in the convention center. On my screen, I see a shift in power. The site of the convention center is turning red and its pulsing slightly. I think it's been turned on. Is there any way you can disable it now?”

  “No. I would if I could. But I need a key for the cube, remember?”

  “Do you really need the cube?”

  “I do and here's why,” I said going to a corner and speaking in hushed tones, looking around for spy drones or anyone listening or watching me. “What I learned from the files is that if you try to turn off the gate while it's activated it won't work. The only way we know how to turn it off safely is by using the cube. Although, if push comes to shove. . .Vartan may decide to bomb it.”

  “Then let's find that key. How do we do that?”

  “Diamond is the key to finding the cipher the key.”

  “Okay. Be careful then. Whatever they did, it's activated.” Which meant we were running out of time. Only a couple of weeks left. Why would they turn it on this early? Must be some type of diagnostic run or something. I could only hope that was it.

  I felt the power buzzing, thrumming through me and I wondered if I was the only one. It seemed that way. Slipping past two courtesy mechs I went upstairs to the third level hallway. At this level, the main auditorium could be seen through its clear ceiling if you looked downward. Seeing two security guards around the corner I slipped down the opposite way and looked down and I saw it. It was a beast.

  A massive gate. Human workers and mechs were buzzing around it like little ants crawling around their queen. It was a near exact replica of the one I saw in the holo-vid schematics on Mars. The bastards had gotten it past me! They were using our own technology against us. But there was something else happening here. I couldn't see it but I felt it. At times around its outside ring perimeter, I would see symbols flash across its surface and I saw people writing some of these down on data pads and entering this information into computers elsewhere on the site. One symbol especially I remembered. This one was shaped like a circle with a horizontal line through it. This symbol which I saw on various parts of the ring of the gate every so often would change color. At first, it was blue and then it would shimmer orange and then to blue again. And when it turned orange the pitch and hum of the gate would change and get noticeably higher and I would feel a slight vibrating hum in the soles of my feet. Inside the gate's center lights would flash and I could see the effects of a wind or a breeze as some of the workers' hair would start to shift and blow. It was the energy field inside the gate. I noticed that this symbol would light up first during each cycle of activity and then the others would light up but not all of them. Only some of them would during certain cycles and then different ones on other cycles. But this particular symbol would come on every single time. When it turned silver all activity from the stargate would stop.