How Bartell had shut down his clandestine surveillance he did not know; he would discover the method when this was all over—when Bartell and that bitch sat rotting behind a brig detainment field.
He held fast to the belief that it would still go down this way.
At least he had gotten the containment design to Sparks; Swan hoped that they were ready with it by the time of this attack. The answer to that question was not in the transmission; he might never know the final outcome. These things were ripping the heart out of their long-range flight and communications program.
So far the only thing that he could call a saving grace was how far out the attacks were occurring.
He’d retired to his quarters late, hoping his sheer exhaustion would take him into sleep, despite the stimulants that still moved through his blood.
After just a few hours, Center Comm interrupted his fitful rest. “Sir, we have Captain Boronson for you.”
They patched through a call from his special team aboard the Rapscallion: there was a breach in the engine room of Pirate Patrol One. The forensics team was examining the fetal remains in the cold stasis and combing the ship for any contaminants out of the norm.
It had nothing to do with contaminants, but the admiral needed them to do their scan and investigation for the sake of appearances. If they had found the one thing that was the most worrisome, a hazard suit wouldn’t have stopped it. He’d told them to keep it short and prioritize the sphere conversion; he was running out of time.
But so far they’d found nothing else. Fortunately. The force creatures had a way of disappearing that was not understood at all. The research team had lost a couple of the creatures in the early days, before the containment had been worked out—the Bullet up from Earth, through null gravity, arriving at the station carrying a lone, dazed soldier and an empty container; no sign of the spherical stone it had held.
In the present case, the disappearing act served to soothe his mind a bit—gone, and good riddance.
Despite that relief, he had not been able to find ease. In his black mood, dark sexual fantasies of Astra crept into his head. Finally, he could focus on nothing else, falling to his desires as he perused the collection of custom immersion holo-movies he’d created.
CHAPTER 72
EVENT: DAY 18, 0715 UT
He’d forced himself to defer his anger at his adjutant.
But only for the time being. Swan’s decision to include Amio in this drama was calculated. He wanted to keep him in his post for now. Without calling the major to his office, he let him know that he was highly displeased and was considering what punishment would suit the failure of duty. The adjutant’s response was a short acknowledgement of responsibility and acceptance. It did not soothe Swan.
Still, the major’s involvement was placating some of the admiral’s overwhelm at an unconscious level. Though he could never admit it to himself, Swan needed another leg to stand on, even when things weren’t in such a shabby state. He didn’t feel all-powerful when he felt all-alone. He needed a witness. Or a scapegoat…
Plus, there was something satisfying about having a goon at his elbow; with things getting out of control like they were, a little muscle at hand never hurt. And the man had a surprisingly sharp mind. He had jumped right in, reviewing the crisis that was playing out on the fringes of space, offering suggestions. Amio told him that it had been his idea, and not Tasimov’s, to submit the requisition to bring Cooper back up from planetside; said he’d met the man when Swan had exiled him to Earth.
Swan granted it then, after having held it up for a day. That was fine; the original question posed by the old researcher needed further elucidation. The question of intelligence. That needed to happen just to placate the Brass. His removal of the man from the project some years ago, confining him Earthside, had been an act of necessity at the time, which was no longer exigent.
Those two scientists were helping first with recapture and contingency plans. Any other questions were superfluous until things were under control.
Swan still believed strongly that the attacks were a clear case of ‘revenge for enslavement’. He just had to be smarter than the creatures; maybe Cooper could be helpful there, too.
Before they’d lost contact with Medallion, Sparks had reported they were close to completing the first containment, and were about to retrieve the second drive unit to build another.
Now, Swan’s team was nearly done with theirs. For the last two hours, Swan’s ear had been filled with the feed from the team leader, Captain Crist Boronson, monitoring any change in their situation, trying not to end up any further behind the eight ball. Time had been crawling; the Rapscallion was on its way home, nearing local space, finally.
The cross-talk of the teams’ techno-mechanical jargon rattled in his ear-implant as they worked at reconfiguring the salvaged containment sphere from the Seeker, which they’d left behind, bodies and all.
Then a woman’s voice cut in urgently. “Captain. We’ve got an intruder…” The feed went silent and did not resume.
Swan panicked. “CRIST… GODDAMIT. CRIST, ANSWER ME!” His shout reverberated in his office, but otherwise went unheeded. They’re here. Fuck. What do I do? What do I do? Swan had lurched out of his office chair and was pacing, hyperventilating, next to his desk. His hands moved spastically through his gray hair, painfully gripping and releasing fistfuls of the close-cropped coif.
The desk comm chirped, causing him to jump, as he snapped his head around to identify the overloud noise. He panted, catching his breath, as he tried to calm himself.
He waved at the comm with an unsteady hand, and rasped, “Yes?”
“Sir, this is Center Comm, we’ve just lost communication with the Rapscallion.”
“I’m not deaf, am I?” Swan snapped at the Comm tech as his fear level shot up. The tech disconnected. Five minutes passed as Swan tried repeatedly to reach his team on the private channel. He’d begun to circle a dark hole when the comm chirped once more.
It was a different tech, a woman’s voice this time. “Sir. Reporting that we have now lost contact with the interstellar ships and outposts. It is system wide, unlike the earlier failures. We’re checking our equipment now. I’ll let you know as soon as we have more information on the failure. We are attempting a standard tight beam refreq with the Rapscallion. Any other orders, sir?”
Clarence Swan was having trouble breathing. He couldn’t answer the woman, so he numbly waved the connection off. They’re here… His sharp intellect faltered. He had nowhere to run. Frozen, his mind whirled, denying focus on the thing he needed to do.
As he stood, unmoving, he receded to someplace within. His own fear of the regression effect was deeply personal. It recalled the sufferings of his childhood: the other school children calling him names like Clara the Big Nose Ballerina, and worse. Running from his threatening tormenters, fearing beatings, he hid. At the class bell it was a sprint, racing ahead of them back to the safety of the classroom.
The memory of the bell was accompanied by one of those brain shocks. It had the effect of bringing him out of the self-deprecating trance he’d dropped into.
He would not return to that time. A dark determination for salvation threaded into his twisting thoughts; he knew what he needed.
Turning to a locked cabinet, keyed to his biometrics, it opened at a touch. He forced his hands to stop shaking, forced himself to ignore the electrical shepherd in his brain as the sensation became a steady buzz. He reached into the open cabinet, and withdrew a high-grade camo suit.
CHAPTER 73
EVENT: DAY 18, 0700 UT
A primary youthening stripped away the majority of knowledge and awareness of the life lived.
Much reeducation had been required in order for these two powerful people to remember and come to grips with their established lives. Their treatments were now scheduled more regularly,
never regressing them beyond the earliest memory-point of their initial reeducation. Each additional bi-yearly treatment took them back just six months, the compressed events of that time period were downloaded into their memories to get them caught up.
Despite the immediacy of events, they went ahead with a scheduled regression, using the host female.
Immediately afterward, as usual, they were the hungriest for their sexual interaction. But, with the weight of unforgotten knowledge and the restored memories of the current crisis weighing upon their minds, they imposed a more mature will upon their carnal desires and set a meeting.
Before the meeting, she made a secret visit to the woman who hosted the alien during their rejuvenation events. Her brother had not yet learned of the advantage that she gained in these visits.
“Hello, Molana, How are you feeling?” She felt some guilt for their treatment of the woman. The drugs that they fed her allowed Molana to live more in the moment, forgetting the soul-sucking events. Immediately after those events, though, it was bad for the surrogate. She was never prepared for the experience, since she forgot about it within hours.
It had been an hour since they had completed. The forgetting had not taken full healing effect yet. But she needed information that only Molana could give her. “Molana, can you hear me? I’m coming in.”
The woman sat on the floor of the small, padded recovery room, her knees drawn to her chest. She rocked back and forth, her head harmlessly bumping the wall with each sway. She said to her benefactor, “They do not like you, mistress. I think they are right.”
She lost patience with the woman, despite her guilt. “I don’t give a goddam about their opinion of me. I need to know what is going on out in the fucking galaxy. You just need to tell me what they are saying, and then everything will be fine.”
Their captive surrogate relinquished her sullen attitude easily, and told her mistress what the ghosts were saying.
* * *
He began the meeting. “Well, I worry that we have enjoyed our last rejuvenation. All the same, we cannot risk the fate of Humanity on our whims.”
“I would say, at this point, that we have been negligent already.” His sister was always stepping ahead of him when it came to responsibility.
It irritated him in a small way. “Yes, yes. Of course you would say that. So be constructive instead of critical: what do we do? It would seem that the space-based captive creatures have been released through some mechanism. Obviously we must set our being free, but considering the attacks, I question that wisdom and how we could do this safely.”
“No. We must first discover a way to communicate, to reason with them. We cannot do this personally. What assets do we have in motion?”
It was a question that he had already been turning over in his head. “Maybe none.”
She was not surprised. She was his equal, and had already reached the same conclusion. “Yes, no access to the fleet in space. And the QB1?”
“I happen to agree with our poor stressed-out admiral, though I have not let that word go down the chain of command. These two captains are rogue, yet I feel that this is going to fall in our favor.”
Again, she agreed with him, though she was surprised at his attitude. “Is that your optimism, or did you arrive at that conclusion by some facts?” She kept her agreement to herself.
“Well, they have already gathered one potential asset, the doctor, and their disappearance is coincidental with the attack at Wheel Station. I would suggest that they are quickly becoming a vector of influence.”
“Umm-huh. Logic. You left out the part about the apparent transmission malfunction, which placed them at the Wheel.” She read the surprise that touched his features for a fraction of a second.
“Oh… I assumed you knew about their jump to the Wheel.”
She did not believe his assertion. “That’s right. I did. When are you going to figure out that my sources are just as good as yours?”
He let that slide, asking instead, “And I also assume that you feel the same about their prospects?”
She agreed. “Of course. And while I have the same facts, it’s for a different reason that I feel the way I do.”
“Do tell, dear sister.” He was smug without regard for her reaction.
She considered him, unfazed by his smugness. But the use of the familial label that she hated—arrogance was one thing, but his scorn was another. She decided to keep her feelings to herself. “No. I prefer to be mysterious.”
“Well, that’s your prerogative.” He aimed his comment at her with subtle chauvinism.
“Careful, your true colors are showing. Keep that up and see where you get with me in the bedroom.” She could not deny her own desires, but successfully manipulated him, despite. Her comment caused him to visibly flare with suppressed emotion.
He put it down rapidly before saying, “What shall we do with our puppet? I worry that he has just broken his strings.”
She flashed a devious grin. “I’m well ahead of you there. Leave him to me. I sent him a fun suggestion; it should sew his thread up nicely.”
Her mischievous energy turned a key that overtopped his will to resist any longer; he launched at her in the minor gravity above the bed, and they submerged into wild, outrageous passion.
CHAPTER 74
EVENT: DAY 18, 0145 UT
“You’re killing her!”
A shocked Ensign Jennifer Scott had stepped out of the cautiously moving line of crewmen. With them, she was assigned the duty of moving their fetal crewmates to the auxiliary triage, where incubators and stasis tanks had been set up.
The nearest fellow crewmen turned their helmeted heads toward the commotion, but otherwise continued, disciplined, moving with the rest who were already focused on their grim and delicate task: each carefully gathered a wriggling, fetal human, encased in an EVA suit.
Ensign Scott had eyes for nothing except a red-lit readout: 8 GRAV. The reading was on a force gauge mounted on a meter-and-a-half diameter sphere, which sat just outside the compromised transfer tube.
Charged with the responsibility of assuring that the thing they had caught would not escape, the crewwoman was doing her job too well. With nervous over-zealousness, Lt. Chamberlain had taken it upon herself to increase the field to the maximum setting, feeling that ‘more was better’. The containment protocol called for a maximum of two gravities, focused inward on the host of the captured Elemental.
The crewman volunteer who had quickly shouldered the alien-hosting Taylor Jest into the modified containment—like a bowling ball into a pin—remembered nothing. Now several years younger, he was asking why he was aboard the ship. He was in the infirmary under the observation of puzzled physicians.
The action had gone smoothly and there had been no further casualties. Of course, Taylor was now in there with the alien force. Her life was in the hands of the security team.
Eight gravities in a short burst was nothing to sneeze at, but it wouldn’t kill the average human. On the other hand, eight gravities, sustained, could indeed kill. Taylor was a remarkable woman in many ways, but she had nothing on gravity. Her long career of dangerous stunts would be quickly ended in this complicated containment.
Minutes, seconds, were critical now. Jennifer’s voice rose with her accusation. “Chamberlain. What are you doing? YOU’RE KILLING HER!”
The woman’s hands tightly gripped a conduit-tethered remote panel. It had clearly been cobbled together, its cables snaking from the remote device through a piled mass of flexible tubing at her feet, then to the sphere. She did not answer Ensign Scott’s concern, which came through her comm’s audio suppressors at a diminished volume. She just traded a worried expression through the visor plate of her helmet.
When Jennifer got no response a second time, without thought to the consequences, she did what was needed to save her friend’s l
ife. Grabbing the controls from the other woman, she quickly scrutinized them. Fortunately for her, there were only a few slides, and they were labeled with some half-assed, hand printed plaques that had been crudely taped to the control box front. There was a GRAVITIES switch, but she worried that Taylor needed immediate medical attention, not just a reduction in force. The one that concerned Jennifer was the one marked KILL SWITCH. It was an unfortunate choice of descriptors for the switch’s function, and caused her to hesitate. None of the others were indicative of a shutdown function, so she did what she had to do. She slid the rudimentary mechanical switch to the opposite position. Quickly, she did the same for the DOOR switch.
Most of the other members of her team had stayed focused on their assigned task, and were well-distracted by the macabre job on their hands. But as she had grabbed the controls, it had gotten their attention. The first platoonmate to understand the threat that their team member was about to bring upon them said, “Wait, Jen,” and struggled to gently set aside the fragile burden that was her regressed shipmate.
The additional, scrambling activity further confused the situation, but then a voice broke through the confusion, barking out of the helmet speakers of each soldier in the hallway. “Ensign Scott, belay your actions. All others see to your charges.” All heads turned, searching for Jennifer now, but it was too late, she had dropped the control box, leaving it to float, and had stepped to the odd sphere. She instantly assessed mechanical latches and popped them one after the other, allowing the closure to rapidly spring open.
Shouts broke onto the shared intra-ship/suit channel, as Taylor’s limp body unfolded out of the cramped space. Various team members, having made the beginnings of a dash toward the pod, halted in their gecko-footed tracks, now attempting to obey the reaffirmed orders. The frequency had gone dead-silent once again; only the sound of anxious breathing broke that quiet.
Parallel Extinction (Extinction Encounters Book 1) Page 38
