by Ken Lozito
Connor craned his neck to see if anyone was behind Tim and Theo. “Is Kasey out there? Or Reisman?”
He took a step toward the door and Tim held up his hand.
“Clear window,” Ashley said.
Connor turned around and looked out the window, which displayed a view of the black canopy of space on one side and a blue planet on the other. Instinctively, his eyes searched for the continents he expected to see, but the land masses were all out of place. A fuzzy area at the bottom of the window cleared last. Surrounding the planet were several distinct rings that resembled a vast expanse of highway made of light.
Connor slowly walked toward the window and gazed at the alien world. He turned toward Ashley, his mouth wide open.
“We’re sixty light-years from Earth. The astronomers have an alpha-numeric designation for the star system, if you’d like to know it,” Ashley said.
Connor looked back out the wide window. Off to the side and in the distance was a large cigar-shaped ship.
“What ship is that?” Connor asked.
“That’s the Galileo. It’s a seed ship, and it’s been here for twenty-five years,” Ashley said.
Connor brought his hands up to his head and raked them through his short hair. He couldn’t stop looking out the window, but at the same time he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He felt his knees go weak and he leaned against the wall. Connor closed his eyes and felt like he was going to be sick.
Ashley came to his side and put her hand on his shoulder. “Just breathe. Everything is going to be fine.”
Connor’s mouth went dry and he couldn’t catch his breath. He looked over at the door, where Tim and Theo looked back at him sympathetically. Connor gulped some air and sprinted toward the door. Tim and Theo drew back in surprise as Connor tucked his shoulder in and barreled through them. The two men went down like bowling pins and Connor darted off, running down the hallway. There was shouting behind him, but he hardly heard it. He had to keep moving. This must be a mistake or maybe some psychological form of interrogation. The Syndicate was known for their ruthless interrogation techniques. They could have put this whole sham together, but to what purpose? The Ghosts were an effective special ops team, but they didn’t harbor any specific intelligence the Syndicate couldn’t get through other means.
Connor ran down the long white hallway. He glanced inside some of the rooms as he passed, and the ones with windows all showed an Earth-like planet with rings around it.
Two hundred years!
Connor rounded a corner and kept going. This hallway had people in it.
“Get out of the way!” Connor shouted.
The people in the hallway scrambled out of reach. He glanced behind and saw a group of men chasing him, all armed with stun batons. He had to find a way out of there. If this was a ship, there must be a hangar, or if he was locked away in some secret facility then there must be a communications array he could use to send a signal out to COMCENT. They would dispatch a team to pick him up. Were Kasey and the other Ghosts here?
The hallway opened into a small atrium with large windows. The alien planet was outside, and Connor stopped running. Nearby, a mother stood holding a child in her arms while the child pointed out the window.
“Is that our new home?” the child asked in an awestruck voice.
The mother smiled and nodded. “It sure is. That’s our new home. We’ll get to go down to the surface soon.”
Connor gasped and his gaze darted around, looking for some way to escape.
“There he is!”
Connor spun around as a group of men closed in on him.
The leader put his stun baton back on his belt and held out his hands. “I know you’re scared. I’m here to help you. Just come back with us.”
“Stay away from me,” Connor said.
The child started to cry as the mother and child ran away from him.
“Just stay back,” Connor said.
“Alright, I’m staying back. Just calm down, buddy. You got a name?”
Connor looked at the man and took the measure of the other men. They held the stun batons like they knew how to use them. Connor took a step toward one.
“We’ll use the stunners if we have to. Don’t make us.”
With five men facing him, they thought they had the advantage. Connor had faced worse odds. He darted in, taking one of them by surprise, then clamped down on the man’s wrist and swung the stunner toward the other man closing in on them. Connor dragged the man around while twisting his wrist. He took the stunner and jammed it into the man’s side.
Two down.
Connor heard a stunner being swung through the air and ducked out of the way. He rolled forward and came to his feet, swinging his own stunner at the man, and the glowing tip smacked against his face.
Three down.
The remaining two men kept their distance.
“There’s nowhere for you to go.”
Behind the men was a hallway that led out of the atrium. “Get out of the way,” Connor said.
“It’s not gonna happen.”
“You can’t stop me,” Connor said.
“Maybe not,” said the man, and he looked behind Connor, “but she can.”
Connor spun around to find Ashley Quinn standing there. She gave him a disapproving look as she jabbed a stunner into his stomach.
Connor felt hot pain spread from his middle as he sank to the floor.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t be any trouble,” Ashley said.
No words would come as the darkness closed in.
Chapter Six
Connor woke up strapped to the bed again. He shook his head and sighed. Dr. Quinn entered the room and stared down at him with a quizzical brow raised. He assumed that Ashley was a mother because only mothers could pack so much disapproval into an expression. Connor glanced down at his arm to see an IV plugged into his vein.
“I have you on a mild sedative,” Ashley said.
He felt a bit calmer, but that meant he was off his guard.
“You still don’t believe what I told you,” Ashley said.
Connor pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Just go ahead and do what you’re going to do.”
Ashley tilted her head to the side with a slightly bemused expression. “What is it you think I’m going to do to you?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
Ashley shook her head. “Well, I had to stick you with a needle to hook up the IV bag, so I broke my promise. But you were unconscious and unable to put up much of a fight.”
Connor looked away at the wall.
“I had no idea you military types were so mistrusting. What is it you did in the military?”
“Don’t you already know? You have my records.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t make much sense to me. I’d much rather hear about it from you. Anyway, there were a lot of references to something called the Syndicate,” Ashley said.
“Are you really going to tell me you’re not part of the Syndicate?”
Ashley laughed as if the idea were the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. “You make it sound so sinister, but no, I’m not part of any syndicate.”
“Sure,” Connor said.
“You’ve looked out the window of my office and you were in the atrium. You saw the planet,” Ashley said.
“I saw an image of a planet. For all I know, you put that image up there to fool me.”
“Why on Earth would I do something like that?”
“To keep me off balance and lull me into a sense of confidence so I’ll give you information,” Connor said.
“I think you give me too much credit, but since we’re talking, do you know how you came to be in a stasis pod in the first place?” Ashley asked.
Connor’s thoughts screeched to a halt and he frowned, unable to remember.
“The pod that you were in was supposed to be occupied by Dr. Peter Faulkner. He’s a planetary scientist whose help we real
ly could use right about now and a close personal friend of Dr. Baker’s. The man you beat up,” Ashley said.
“I think we can both agree he had it coming,” Connor replied.
“Some would agree. But given the circumstances, I think we all could be given a bit of leniency for some of our behaviors. You know, like running around the Ark like a madman, scaring a child and his mother half to death. That sort of thing,” Ashley said.
Connor thought about it for a moment. Why would the Syndicate go through all that trouble? Could they be trying to brainwash him?
“Someone really did a number on you. I can see you still don’t believe me,” Ashley said.
She grabbed her tablet computer and typed some things in, reading the screen for a few moments and then looking up at him. “Counterintelligence and counterinsurgency. You’ve been trained not to take anything at face value.”
Connor shrugged as best he could from within his restraints.
“No response to that? Okay. Have you heard of the Ark program?” Ashley asked.
Connor frowned in thought. A wall seemed to give way in his mind and the floodgates holding back his memories opened. Within moments he remembered Admiral Wilkinson drugging him, and he looked at Ashley in alarm. Could she be telling him the truth?
“You’ve just remembered something else, haven’t you?” Ashley said, peering at him intently. She came closer to the bed. “I wish you would just trust me. I’m telling you the truth.”
There was a knock at the door. Ashley walked over and opened it.
“I heard someone finally knocked Baker on his ass and I just wanted to thank them in person.”
“Lenora, please. That’s not very professional.”
A woman with brilliantly blue eyes and long auburn hair walked in. She looked at Connor and then at the straps but didn’t seem surprised.
“Another one not taking the news very well,” she said.
Ashley stood next to her. “Lenora Bishop, this is Connor Gates. I’m afraid his being here is something of a surprise to everyone, including Connor.”
Lenora glanced at Ashley, and her big blue eyes widened when she looked back at him. Her full lips made a circle, and Connor found himself fixated on Lenora’s beautiful face.
“Oh my god, I’m so . . . wow,” Lenora said. “I can’t believe it. How the hell could this have happened? I thought all the pods were vetted before entering storage on the Ark.”
Ashley shrugged. “Evidently something slipped through the vetting process.”
Lenora looked back at Connor. “You’re just gonna have to deal with it. We slept for two hundred years, and like it or not, you’re gonna be part of humanity’s first interstellar colony.”
The edges of Connor’s lips curved upward. “We’ll see.”
Lenora leaned in and looked at him intently. “Oh, you’re a stubborn one.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“I’ll bet,” Lenora said.
“What do you do here?” Connor asked.
“Well, everyone does a little bit of everything, but my specialty is archaeology,” Lenora said.
Connor glanced at Ashley, who gave him a nod. “Why would they bring an archaeologist on an interstellar colony mission?”
“Are you kidding me? Why wouldn’t they? We had no idea what we were going to find. All the probe sent back was that the conditions were within Earth norms, so humans could survive here. And in the end, we didn’t end up anywhere near where we were supposed to go. So you ask why bring an archaeologist on a colony mission? And the answer is to get the answers to the tough questions,” Lenora said.
Connor smiled and found himself enjoying the sound of her voice. “Like what?” he asked.
“Just wait until you get down to the surface. We’ve found remnants of an alien civilization. And I’m not talking about evidence of parasitic life. I’m talking about a species that built something. A whole civilization,” Lenora said.
“So there are aliens on this planet?”
Lenora frowned. “Technically, yes. They’re just not the ones we found ruins for. We’re still looking. Anyway, I have to go. It was nice to meet you, and I do hope to see you on the surface someday.”
Lenora left the room and Connor watched her go.
“Lenora has a lot of energy,” Ashley said.
“She certainly does,” Connor said.
Ashley regarded him for a moment. “You still don’t believe it, do you? Not fully. Okay, let’s try this again. I’ll take the restraints off and you need to cooperate. I’m not sure what the long-term effects are of repeated stunning, and I don’t want to go look it up.”
The straps retracted and Connor was free. He didn’t know what to think.
“Come on, let’s go,” Ashley said.
“Where to now? Another window for me to look out of?”
“I’d like to introduce you to my husband, Tobias,” Ashley said.
Connor decided to cooperate. He’d tried running and it had landed him right back in restraints. If this was the Syndicate trying to brainwash him, he figured he’d see how far they were willing to go.
“Sounds good. I can’t wait to meet him,” Connor said.
Chapter Seven
Connor followed Ashley out of the room and saw Tim and Theo waiting outside.
“Gentlemen,” Connor said in greeting.
He expected a warning look or some indication that the two men wanted some kind of payback for what he’d done to them, but there wasn’t anything.
“Feeling better?” Tim asked.
Connor glanced at Ashley and then back at the two men. “Worlds. Hey listen, about before . . .”
Theo smiled, revealing a great big set of pearly whites in contrast to his dark skin. “Looking forward to next time. There’s a pickup football game on the surface. You might want to think about joining up.”
“I’ll think about it,” Connor said.
The Syndicate was pulling out all the stops to convince him he was shanghaied on a ship that was some sixty light-years from Earth, so Connor dutifully followed as Ashley led him through a series of hallways with no shortage of people busy doing a number of tasks.
“Are you taking me to the bridge?” Connor asked.
“Goodness no. The Ark is the biggest ship we’ve ever built. No, I’m taking you to one of the hangar decks nearby,” Ashley said.
If they were taking him to a real hangar deck, they couldn’t be too concerned with him escaping. “Is your husband a doctor too?”
“No, Tobias is the governor of the colony,” Ashley said.
“Governor? Really?”
Ashley ignored his dubious tone. “Of course. Can’t set up a colony without some kind of government. Once we’re established, we’ll hold elections and stuff, but that won’t be until everyone is awakened and the colony is established on the surface of the planet.”
Connor let out a slight chuckle.
“I know you’re having doubts. I can’t even imagine what this must be like for you. Just try to keep an open mind, okay?” Ashley said.
She led him through a series of doors that ended in a command center. There were multiple rows of workstations about with teams working. There were also windows on the far side of the command center that overlooked a massive hangar bay.
Connor stopped in his tracks, his mouth agape. He looked around, taking a few steps forward. Throughout his career he had been conditioned to take in information and adapt as needed, but nothing had prepared him for this. If this was the Syndicate trying to brainwash him, he felt like it was beginning to work.
Ashley waited patiently for him with a knowing smile. “Come on, I want you to meet Tobias. He’s in the conference room over here.”
Connor glanced back at his escorts, Tim and Theo, and they gave him encouraging nods.
“You could have warned me,” Connor said.
Tim grinned. “And ruin the surprise? You wouldn’t have believed us anyway.”
&nbs
p; Connor followed Ashley across the command center and into a conference room. In the middle of the room was a long table that had a holoscreen outlined in translucent amber lines to give it definition. An older man with salt-and-pepper-colored hair stood in front of it. Next to him were three younger men, not much more than boys.
“Tobias,” Ashley called as they approached.
Tobias was sipping coffee from a mug and turned at her call. He hastily put his mug down and stuck out his hand. “Hi there, I’m Tobias Quinn.”
Connor shook the proffered hand and introduced himself.
Tobias gestured toward each of the young men in turn. “This is Noah and Lars, and this is my son, Sean.”
Connor blanched at the mention of Sean.
Tobias glanced at his wife. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” Connor said. “I have a son named Sean.”
Tobias’s expression became somber. “I’m so sorry.”
Connor clamped down on his emotions, but his heart was thumping like a rabbit. He needed to keep it together. “It’s not your fault,” Connor said and looked at the three young men. “Nice to meet you.”
They returned the sentiment in kind.
“Could you guys give us a few minutes?” Tobias said to the young men, then turned back to Connor. “I bet you could use a drink.”
Connor looked at him. “Yeah, I think that would be good.”
Tobias walked over to the side and pulled out a metal container. He grabbed a couple of glasses and poured two fingers of dark amber liquid into each.
Tobias handed a glass to his wife and then to Connor. “Kentucky bourbon. A little taste of home,” Tobias said.
Connor downed the bourbon in one swallow, and it blazed a path down his throat. Warmth spread across his chest as he felt the alcohol immediately start to do its thing.
“I’d offer you another, but then I’d start getting that look from my wife. You know, that look that tells you you’re heading into trouble,” Tobias said.
“Careful now,” Ashley warned and gave Connor a wink.
“Okay, let’s get to it,” Tobias said. “You were found in Peter Faulkner’s pod and you have no recollection of how you got there. Judging by your reaction to being on the Ark, I feel it’s safe to say that you had nothing to do with being stowed away. Sound fair to you?”
