by B. V. Larson
I froze for a second, and then I realized it must be true. The agents called him “Doc.”
“Right, Doc,” I said. “So… how about it? Are you going to show me this new ship, or what?”
He made a blurringly fast movement with his fingers in the air. I figured he was frustrated.
“All right,” he said, “maybe you can help. There are politics involved, and you’re a political animal. This laser—”
He pointed to the cannon they’d worked on so hard today, which was now silent and dead-looking, canted at a nearly vertical angle up through the ceiling.
“—it isn’t as useless as you and others seem to believe. It’s part of Icarus. A critical part, in my opinion.”
I sat back and nodded, looking at the gigantic cylinder as if I cared. “Go on.”
“You see, it isn’t firing at other star systems—not directly. It’s supposed to fire probes at interstellar jump points. At what you would call a stellar flux.”
Now, he finally had my interest.
“You’re firing this thing at rips in space-time? Why would you do that?”
He gestured for me to quiet down, and I did.
“I see you grasp the significance. We can’t throw our new ship toward the stars without knowing anything about where it’s going. We only have one ship—how can we risk it by sending it off into the unknown on her maiden voyage?”
“All right, I get the reasoning, but where are these rips coming from?”
“As you know, we’re being watched by your Kher. Now and then a ship comes to check on us. They do this at random intervals—but the frequency has been increasing.”
“Due to your experiments?”
He shrugged. “Doubtful. But some people have made that objection.”
I was beginning to catch on. There was a battle going on within the project group, and Doctor Abrams was on the side who favored taking risks. In that case, I’d usually count him as an ally, as I often favored risky strategies myself.
“Tell me more,” I said. “How can you detect these Kher intrusions?”
He looked down briefly, then seemed to come to a decision. He lifted his chin defiantly. “The government has known about the visitations for some time. Only after they showed themselves openly, however, were we given a budget to track them. We now have the capacity to sense any entry into local space—at least anything going on among the inner planets of the Solar System.”
“Okay… You’re using satellites, then?”
“Of course. You’ve heard of secret military launches for years, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, they weren’t all hanging over Asia looking for ICBM activity.”
“I see... Tell me about—”
“That’s enough from me. Are you willing to help me or not? If I bring you into this project, will you help me achieve my goals?”
That was a hard question to answer. After all, I didn’t know exactly what he was planning. But if I refused him now, or demanded more information, he might change his mind. A man on the outside had zero chance of getting into the vaults beneath Cheyenne Mountain. You simply must have an invitation to go to that party.
“I will,” I said firmly.
He frowned. “No objections? No demands?”
“None. I want in. I brought the original ship home, and I did that to help Earth build her own fleet. I’d be happy to do whatever I can to further that goal.”
Abrams allowed himself a flickering smile. “This is a welcome surprise, Blake,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do. Now, if you would be so kind…?”
He pointed to the door. As I headed toward the exit, I ran into Robin. She wasn’t alone, however. She had two guards flanking her, hustling her roughly back into the building. They looked pissed off and very serious.
=5=
“Doctor Abrams?” asked one of the men. “We caught this woman with a surveillance device. She was listening outside your office.”
Abrams made his fingers dance again. “Oh that, yes, we discovered her phone and turned it off.”
Robin looked down. “I want to see a lawyer,” she said. “There’s a free press in this country for a reason.”
Frowning, I began pawing in her purse again. She squawked about it, but I ignored her. I found another device, a transmitter attached to one of those cellphone recharging batteries. I held it up, and she shrugged.
“I must have left it on by mistake,” she said evenly. “I’m a reporter. Reporters carry recording devices. Is anyone even surprised?”
“This could be a felony,” one of the guards said, taking the device from me.
“I didn’t sign any non-disclosures when I came in here,” Robin said with some alarm.
“That may not matter. We’ve passed some new, tough legislation since the aliens showed up. Ever heard of the Non-human Protocols? You must know about that.”
She didn’t meet our eyes. “I’ll destroy all of it.”
“Not good enough,” said the guard. He took her cell, her devices, and put them all in a trashcan. Then he found a hammer the techs had used on the space cannon and crunched the contents of the trashcan, smashing the devices to scrap.
“Still not good enough,” Abrams said. “She’ll report everything she’s seen and heard the moment she gets off this compound. Place her under arrest.”
“Hold on a second, Doc,” I said. “I got her into this, and I—”
He whirled around on me. “Yes, you did. I’m glad you’re at least taking responsibility. You’ve been in our new federal facilities—the ones we dug underground, right?”
He was talking about the special ‘detention areas’ where the government had put Lt. Commander Jones. I’d helped get him out of there, along with many others who’d been mentally affected by the Kher and their symbiotic implants.
“Yeah, I’ve been down there.”
“That’s where this woman is headed—and it’s your fault for insisting she come here.”
“I’ve got rights!” Robin complained. “You can’t hold me without due process. You can’t—”
“The Non-human Protocols contain many clauses regarding special circumstances,” Abrams said. “Among them is the suspension of rights when enemy combatants from off-world are identified. This includes not just aliens, but their agents here on Earth as well.”
“You’re calling me an alien spy? Are you serious?”
“Individuals have been identified. The law is the law,” Abrams said flatly.
My lips twisted up in anger at last. “I’m out then,” I said. “I’m not helping you achieve your goals, Doc.”
He looked surprised. So did Robin.
“I thought you said you didn’t have a sexual relationship with this woman,” Abrams said.
One of the guards coughed politely, but everyone ignored him.
“I’m standing on principle,” I said. “She’s made some mistakes, but she’s no alien spy.”
Abrams was annoyed. He put his skinny hands on his skinny hips and looked at us like errant children.
“What do you suggest we do with her, Blake?”
“I’ll take her with me into the project area. Give us both clearances.”
He scoffed and shook his head.
“Aren’t you listening?” I demanded. “Give her full clearances, and have her sign up for complete secrecy. If she violates the oath, you can jail her and throw away the key. That way you’re certain she won’t report what she learned here tonight.”
“I can’t sign something like that!” she objected. “I’m a reporter.”
“Not anymore, you’re not,” I told her. “Think about it this way, you’ll have inside information. If it ever goes public, you’ll be able to write a book about it.”
“That’s unlikely,” Abrams said. “But in any case, your scheme won’t work. What kind of job would she be suited for? We have techs, and they’re all trained and reliable. Even the janitorial staff—”
&n
bsp; Robin was about to explode again, and I lifted my hands to settle both of them down.
“How about a PR handler?” I asked. “We aren’t making announcements now, but we’ll have to later when this thing flies. At some point, we’ll have to go public and she can prepare for that day.”
Abrams sucked in a breath and let it go. I could tell he thought it would be simpler to throw Robin into a dungeon and lose the key to her cell.
“All right,” he said finally. “But let’s not screw up like this in the future, Blake. You can’t spread this around. Unreliable people can’t be allowed to know what’s going on—at least not yet.”
“Agreed,” I said, putting my hand out to shake with him.
He left me high and dry, turning back to his work. “Meet me here in the morning, we leave from the heliport at seven.”
I took Robin outside the second the guards let go of her arms. They escorted us to the gates without so much as grunting at us.
When we were back in her car, she breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
“I don’t like thank-yous,” she said, “but I really do owe you one.”
“Glad to hear you realize that. You took a huge chance back there with that recording equipment. These people aren’t fooling around.”
“No… What about Abrams? Do you think he’ll work all night in there?”
I looked back at the installation. There were lights on here and there among the various labs. One of them was his office, I was sure of that.
“I don’t think his kind sleeps much,” I said. “The undead are like that.”
She laughed, and she drove us down to her hotel. I didn’t object, as I didn’t have anywhere else to stay.
She invited me in, and I again made no objection. Then she began undressing herself, and me, one piece of clothing at a time.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked her.
“You can stop me anytime you want.”
I never did stop her. It was nice, and we soon stretched out on her bed on top of the covers and began dreaming.
=6=
The next morning, I was startled awake by a beeping noise. It was my phone—I’d set an alarm.
Daylight was sending a blue glow around the curtains. The shower was hissing, and Robin was clearly using it.
When we’d showered and dressed, we barely had time to eat in the car on the way up to the labs again. She’d packed all her stuff, and I envied her for having stuff to pack. I was wearing yesterday’s suit as I was still too paranoid to go back to my hotel and risk arrest.
When we got to the labs, the helicopter was on the pad with blades whirling slowly. It had just landed.
Abrams looked at his watch—he wore one regularly.
“You’re late,” he complained.
“Only by four minutes,” Robin said.
He looked at her sternly.
“I’m not talking to you. I don’t like waiting, Blake. I demand that my employees show respect by not wasting my time.”
Robin bit her lip but said nothing. I guess there was a first time for everything.
We got into the helicopter, and I was surprised to see a familiar set of luggage in the back.
“Hey…” I said in surprise. “This is my stuff!”
“I made certain calls to the police,” Abrams explained. “They’d confiscated your belongings… but I made arrangements. All charges have been dropped.”
“Uh… thanks.”
Abrams nodded coldly, and the helicopter soon took off. At high altitude, these things had a harder time flying, but our ship did fine. It was a government-transport bird.
Cheyenne Mountain was about two hundred miles north. It would have taken six hours in a car, but we made it in about an hour by helicopter. The Rocky Mountains were stark and beautiful out the window as they passed below us.
Robin was staring, but she shivered now and then. She hadn’t worn warm enough clothing for travel over the mountains.
When we finally arrived, we were taken into the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station. We were left in an antiseptic room with flickering fluorescent lights, and after a while we were given statements and contracts to sign. After a briefing, we were left alone to sign the docs.
I signed right away—after all, we didn’t have much choice.
“From this point onward, the government owns our asses,” I told Robin.
She looked alarmed. It was a predicament I was used to, having served in the Navy for years, but it was new to Robin.
“Should we do this?” she whispered to me.
“What choice do we have? You want to go to an underground prison?”
“What about you? They won’t do anything to you. They can’t—you’re a hero.”
“Well… they could think of something, believe me.”
She put her pen down before signing. She leaned back and crossed her arms.
“I’m holding out. I’ll negotiate. Lawyers can be wonderful things.”
I looked her over thoughtfully. I whistled and stood up, offering my hand. She frowned at it.
“I’m impressed,” I told her. “I didn’t count you as the stubborn-prisoner type. I guess I was wrong.”
“They won’t put me in prison,” she said doubtfully.
“No… they won’t. Not exactly. Let me tell you what these special detention areas are like.”
I described them to her from memory. I’d been down there, in those dark vaults underground. The people kept there were a different breed. Many of them, like my old friend Lt. Commander Jones, had been infected with a symbiotic by the Kher. I’d done my best to free them from captivity, by freeing their minds of their syms.
She listened in shock.
“Is this information classified?” she asked me.
“Not really. It’s not widely known, however. The people involved were the contest losers, so no one really cared what happened to them. All the media attention was on the winners who went into space—like me.”
“That could make a great story…” she said, her eyes alight with ideas. “I could do a lot with just that.”
“You could,” I said, “but probably not until the terms of this contract are met. Did you see the end date?”
“Yeah. Something like four years. That’s crazy.”
I shrugged. “It feels like it goes by fast when you’re in the middle of it.”
She made a rude noise with her lips.
I was getting tired of her attitude, so I left her there to think about it. When I exited the room, she was tapping her pen on her contract irritably, making tiny black dots on the paper.
Outside the room, I was met by a familiar face. It was none other than Lt. Commander Jones, a tall, powerfully built black man who was pushing fifty years old.
“Is that you, Jones?” I shouted, gripping his hand. “It’s great to see you. You’re looking very fit!”
He shook my hand firmly. We grinned at each other, and I noticed he was back in his Navy uniform. That was a surprise. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been half-crazy and locked in a cell.
“Good to see you too, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’ve been waiting outside this room for quite a while. I was beginning to wonder if you and that reporter were having relations in there.”
“No such luck, sir. The problem is she doesn’t want to sign. She doesn’t understand that the people here are serious.”
“We are serious, Blake. Dead serious.”
We exchanged glances again, and that’s when I realized Jones was on the project.
“You’re in on all this then?” I asked. “Not just visiting?”
He laughed. “This place isn’t Disneyland. Everyone here is in an official capacity—including you now.”
“I see. I’m kind of surprised that you—well…”
“You don’t have to say it,” he said, straightening his spine. “I’m not the man I was down in that cell the last time we met. It took me months to convince people of that, but they’ve co
me to believe it. They brought me in because I’ve been to space, if only briefly. I am, in fact, the highest ranking human officer to ever have been aboard a Kher ship.”
I nodded thoughtfully.
Jones moved to a wall and touched it. The wall appeared to melt away, and revealed Robin, sitting in a small chamber. She looked pissed, worried and bored all at once.
I blinked at that. I would have to remember it wasn’t the mirrors that were see-thru down here. The walls themselves were spying on you.
“Don’t worry about your friend,” Jones said while we watched her without her knowledge. “She’ll come around, or you won’t be seeing her again for a while. Either way, we’ve got more important things to discuss.”
He marched me down to the vaults. We took a jeep-ride into the mountain itself. It was strange, entering this Cold War relic. It was the ultimate bomb-shelter, dug into hard granite. When we got to the bottom, we were under two thousand feet of rock. A five acre facility was hidden there.
“We’ve done some modifications—some drilling,” Jones told me on the way down. “The ship itself is being built in modular sections. We’ll take her up to the surface when she’s ready, and assemble her at Peterson in Colorado Springs.”
“Right… and just how close are you to finishing her?”
He looked troubled. “Some would say we’re ready now.”
“But others want to hang back?” I prompted. “They want to keep her grounded in this hole?”
Jones shrugged. “That’s not my call. I’m a consultant here, not in charge. I would suggest you keep your opinions to yourself on the matter as well.”
“Got it, sir,” I said crisply.
When you lie, it’s always best to do it with complete certainty in your voice. Internally, I’d already decided to inquire further into this squabble about how and when we should reveal the new ship. After all, that was the reason Abrams had brought me here—not to mention the reason some joker named Godwin had tried to stab me in the back.
We started the tour after that, and I couldn’t help but notice the vaults were different than they’d looked during the Cold War. I’d only seen pictures, but the place had been modernized. Instead of dim-lit rooms, natural rock and consoles lined with operators, I saw a central area with a catwalk running around it. Up along the catwalk were numerous offices enclosed in glass. The offices had blinds, but most of them were open.
