“Sorry, sir,” he replied. “The Spanish asked for the NAF’s help when the Canaries were invaded by the West African Union, and our squad was one of the first in. Amphibious assault, four surface ships came from the south under heavy air cover. But we had no idea how well armed the Westies were, and…” His voice trailed off.
“And?” prompted Biermann.
More smoke, more energy fire. More screams.
“And we lost a lot of people. I lost a lot of people.”
“Including two of your graduating class, isn’t that correct?”
Gabriel ground his teeth together and stared back at Biermann, wondering why he was opening up such a sore wound. After a few moments he said, “Yes. Ensigns DePalma and Cristoff.”
“You were their squad commander.” Biermann stepped closer to Gabriel. “How did that make you feel, Lieutenant?” he asked, emphasizing Gabriel’s brand new rank. “Leading your friends to their deaths?”
Gabriel paused a moment before answering. He saw images of Anya DePalma’s pained face as the pulse rifle blasts tore into her stomach and the burned body of Taj Cristoff lying in the mud, one arm missing.
“Captain, with all due respect,” he said in a low tone, “I believe you were there when I told Admiral Cafferty that I don’t have any friends.”
Biermann nodded. “Indeed I was, Lieutenant.” He turned from Gabriel and walked to the front of the room, stopping at the wide briefing wallscreen. He reached out and ran his finger along the bottom edge of the wallscreen frame as if checking for dust. Without turning back to face Gabriel, he said, “I’ve kept an eye on you. You performed admirably in the face of overwhelming odds and didn’t hesitate to lead your team into harm’s way for the greater good. For the mission. And that’s someone I need.”
He turned from the wallscreen. “Which is why I requested your transfer to Naval Special Operations Command. Now,” he said, boring his eyes into Gabriel, “MacFarland?”
Gabriel struggled to maintain his composure at the mention of the name. Captain Llewelyn MacFarland, or Dredge as he had his friends call him, was the CO of the combined Navy and Marine assault force, but he directed the battle from a plush command tent in a secure NAF base in Morocco. As the battle quickly turned from an assault to a bloodbath, MacFarland continued to order the outmanned and outgunned soldiers forward. The NAF had suffered over 90% casualties that long weekend, a battle that would later become known as Francisco’s Stand after the commander of the Spanish assault force that had finally broken the WAU’s hold on the island.
Gabriel never met MacFarland in person, and for that he was glad. He wasn’t sure how he’d react.
He cleared his throat. “Captain MacFarland is a well-respected Navy officer.”
Biermann raised an eyebrow, silently prodding Gabriel to continue.
After a long quiet minute, Gabriel asked, “Sir, may I speak freely?”
“You may. I’d expect nothing less.”
Gabriel took a deep breath. “Captain MacFarland is a well-respected Navy officer, one with powerful family connections, and he’s… ambitious.”
Biermann’s smile returned, but this time it crept slightly into his eyes. “That he is, Lieutenant. You are observant and seem to be a fairly good judge of character.” He walked back to stand in front of the first row of seats where Gabriel sat. “There may come a time where you cross paths with MacFarland. Perhaps more than one. And I’d like you to… keep an eye on him. Be my eyes and ears. He is ambitious, no doubt. And he does have family connections. But he’s also reckless with command, as you experienced.”
He looked up at the ceiling. “But that’s a discussion for another time.” He brought his gaze back to Gabriel and said one word. “Cielo.”
Gabriel cocked his head at the mention of the orbital military research station. Not sure where Biermann was going with this, he remained silent.
“I’m sure you’re aware of Cielo’s functions,” Biermann continued. “Weapons enhancements, propulsion design, biomechanical research, and so on. But, as with any military project, there are certain… endeavors that remain out of the public eye. And some that even our esteemed Congressional Oversight Committee does not, and will not, know of.”
He crossed his arms and stared into Gabriel’s eyes. “Please be aware what we are about to discuss is highly classified. Part of that hardcopy you are holding authorizes an immediate bump in security level. But it also defines the consequences, if you divulge any confidential information. The North American Federation Navy has the legal right to make you disappear. Understood?”
Gabriel glanced down at the sheet he still held, not bothering to read through the fine print. Part of basic training drilled into him the need for secrecy and trust, and at this point he had no reason to break that trust. Nor anyone to even break it to.
“Understood, sir,” he said with a slight nod.
Biermann returned the nod and uncrossed his arms. “Good. Now tell me, Lieutenant. Have you heard of the HAMR program?”
Gabriel blinked at hearing the acronym for one of the Federation’s most whispered about secrets, one he had heard about through the typical method — gossip. HAMR, or Human Augmentation and Microcellular Replacement was the word on the street, which was quite a mouthful for gossip to pass on, so Gabriel had assumed there was at least a grain of truth behind it.
Super soldier, some called it. No one could prove it existed or had met anyone associated with the project, but the rumors alone gave pause to more than one potential NAF enemy. During the Canary Islands battle, one of the prisoners Gabriel’s squad had taken, when questioned why the WAU hadn’t used the battlefield nuke everyone knew they possessed, said they were keeping it in reserve in case the NAF sent in HAMRs.
Gabriel blinked again, pushing away the memory of the battle. He could still smell the scorched mud, something he knew he’d never forget.
“Only rumors, sir,” he answered. “Nothing definitive.” He knew where Biermann was going with this, and while he felt rising apprehension, he also felt something else — a twinge of excitement.
“Of course nothing definitive, Lieutenant,” Biermann said with a small smile. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be a secret project. I want you to be a part of it. I need you on my team.”
He turned and walked to the hatch. “Now, I’m not a tech whiz by any stretch, so I want you to hear the HAMR details from the horse’s mouth.” He stopped at the hatch, one hand on the edge. “You’ll be accompanying me to Cielo on my cutter. Captain Rivera has already been notified of your transfer. Meet me with your personal gear in Docking Bay Two in fifteen minutes. That should give you enough time to say goodbye to your squadmates.”
He stepped through the hatch, but before it slid shut behind him, he called over his shoulder, “Welcome to Naval Special Warfare, Lieutenant Gabriel.”
Gabriel stared at the closed hatch for a long minute after Biermann left. Transfer, hell, he thought. I’ve been Shanghaied.
It wasn’t how he expected to be joining the Special Forces, but the fact of the matter was, it was done. He next twinge of excitement was quickly washed away with the lingering memory of Gilly’s face.
As Gabriel rose to leave the Ready Room, he knew that wouldn’t be the last casualty he’d see in his career.
Chapter 2
The high velocity cutter run from the Coral Sea in the Belt to Cielo in high Earth orbit took over seven hours. Seven hours of uncomfortable 1.9G acceleration and deceleration, during which time Gabriel tried to nap. One thing his relatively short military experience had taught him was to catch some sleep at any opportunity, including times when his body weighed nearly five hundred pounds.
Captain Biermann had done the same, so the transit was mercifully quiet. The clank of the docking collar onto the cutter’s hull brought Gabriel out of his light sleep, and he opened his eyes to see Biermann floating in front of his acceleration couch, one hand holding a ceiling-mounted strap.
“We’ve arrived, Li
eutenant. Gather your gear and follow me.”
Gabriel unfastened his safety belt and rose from the couch. He pushed off from the ceiling clumsily and floated towards his gear, strapped down against the rear bulkhead of the cutter’s transit lounge. He bounced off the bulkhead and grabbed one of the gear straps to steady himself. It wasn’t his first time in zero-G; all naval personnel had multiple sessions of weightless experience throughout their basic training, and he had even more during his twelve-week OCS stint. But this was the first time he had been under heavy Gs for several hours straight, and his muscles rebelled. It felt oddly like his drop capsule experiences, only instead of trying to adjust to standard gravity after high Gs when the capsules landed, he was trying to acclimate himself back to microgravity. He hoped Biermann wasn’t paying too much attention to his awkwardness.
He looked up from the gear package to see Biermann’s back as he floated out of the open hatch. Breathing a quick sigh of relief, he unzipped the straps and pulled his bag free, then pushed off the bulkhead to follow.
Cielo Station was a traditional Stanford torus design, resembling a spoked wheel rotating around a central hub that provided artificial gravity to the habitable spaces arranged along the near mile-long circumference of the wheel. Originally designed as a luxury space hotel, the NAF purchased it shortly before completion when private funding ran out and the owners sold at pennies on the dollar. The NAF completed the build and boosted it to high Earth orbit — over 27,000 miles in altitude — to keep it from prying eyes and the ever-growing number of LEO stations and geostationary satellites, as well as to provide an easier jumping-off point for naval vessels entering or leaving orbit.
The central hub was reconfigured and extended by over a thousand feet in each direction, giving Cielo the ability to dock up to sixteen ships concurrently, from tiny shuttles up to Navy frigates. The planned luxury suites had been stripped and converted to research bays, most of which were accessible to any personnel allowed to dock. However, some bays were off-limits to all but the highest security clearance levels. Including an innocuous, unmarked gray door in Section Six.
Gabriel followed Biermann’s retreating figure as they stepped from the transfer hub into the main corridor, and he gratefully felt the .7G pull his body to the decking. The brief elevator ride had given him a chance to steady his muscles, which still quivered from the heavy G shuttle ride. Now, as he walked along the brightly lit hall, his body relaxed. He checked his neuretics: eighteen-thirty on Cielo’s time system. His stomach growled. The nutrition bar and water bulb during the twelve-minute zero-G flipover on the flight wasn’t cutting it for a full day’s meal.
“Captain,” he said, only to be stopped short by Biermann’s raised hand.
“Dinner can wait,” he said over his shoulder. “Trust me when I say you don’t want a full stomach right now.”
Gabriel was about to question what Biermann meant by that statement when the captain stopped at a gray door with a palmscan pad mounted on the wall beside it. He looked back at Gabriel, then gestured to the pad with a dip of his head.
“They’re expecting you, not me,” he said.
Gabriel approached the pad and glanced back at Biermann. “But they don’t have my scan information on…”
“Sure they do,” Biermann interrupted. “You wouldn’t have gotten this far if we didn’t have everything on you we needed.”
Gabriel looked back at the pad. The excitement he felt back on the Coral Sea gave way to more apprehension. Being recruited by Special Warfare was one thing. Feeling like his future was already laid out before him by someone else was quite another.
He reached out and pressed his palm against the pad. It was warm to the touch, and lit up green behind his hand. He felt a slight electrical tingle in his arm. After a few seconds, the green light disappeared and the door slid aside, revealing a red-tinged room beyond. With a quick glance at Biermann, Gabriel stepped through the door.
His eyes quickly adjusted to the dim red light, and he saw a dark-shirted woman on the far side of the room. She looked up from the table she stood in front of.
“Ah, Lieutenant Gabriel,” she said. “You’re here.”
The lights suddenly switched to bright white and Gabriel blinked several times. The woman walked up to him and extended a hand. Now that the lights were on fully, he saw her shirt was actually a light blue pullover, and was not the typical white lab coat he always assumed scientists and doctors wore. He couldn’t be sure if she was either, or neither.
“Doctor Moira Knowles. A pleasure, Lieutenant.”
Gabriel set his gear bag down and shook her hand. “Ma’am.” Doctor it was.
She smiled. “Ma’am. How formal. You Navy types are all alike. Call me Moira. Or Doc, whatever you prefer. Just not ma’am. That’s for my grandmother.”
Gabriel pursed his lips. “You’re not Navy?”
Her smile turned into a laugh. “Oh, hell no. I get paid far better as a private researcher. I moonlight here because this project is my baby. And for better or worse, it can’t be worked on anywhere else.”
“Captain Biermann said…” Gabriel started to say as he looked over his shoulder, but stopped short when he saw Biermann had not entered the room. The door was already closed.
Knowles released his hand. “Captain Biermann will meet us when the procedures are complete, Evan.”
Gabriel turned back around to face Knowles. “Procedures?” His apprehension returned, and he missed the fact she used his first name.
Knowles scrunched up her brow. “Yes. Didn’t Biermann explain them?” She frowned when Gabriel didn’t answer. “Of course he didn’t. Damned spooks are always too busy. Dumps it on me. I get it.”
She turned and walked back to the table where she had been working. Gabriel looked left and right, scanning the lab, as he thought of it. His neuretics showed it was forty-two feet wide, the width of all of the bays along Cielo’s wheel, and just under two hundred feet long with a slight upward curve to the floor in each direction. One end of the lab was taken up by a wallscreen; the opposite end, closest to where Gabriel stood, held a bank of smaller screens, all blank. In the approximate center of the lab was a massive state-of-the-art holotable, also switched off. The only active equipment, it appeared, was on Knowles’s work table: several open flexscreens, a large device that resembled a 3-D medical nanoscope Gabriel had seen years ago in his boot camp clinic, and dozens of electronically sealed specimen containers.
But the most prominent item in the lab, and the one that gave Gabriel the most apprehension, was the large plastic structure he had walked past to join Knowles. It was a rectangular box with rounded corners, around eight feet long and three feet across; the same three feet in height. White in color except for a glass lid, it sat horizontally on four thick steel pedestals, one at each corner, and reminded Gabriel of a coffin.
The lid was open, swung vertically on a hinge at one end, and Gabriel glanced inside as he walked past. The inside was also smooth plastic, though unlike the bright white exterior, it was matte black with several small holes on the bottom and dozens of studs along each side. A claustrophobic spa therapy tub, a part of his mind said, but the more rational side of his mind overrode that. Stasis capsule.
Gabriel pulled his gaze from the capsule and walked up next to Knowles. She was peering into the top of the nanoscope, apparently unconcerned with her guest.
He cleared his throat. “Procedures?” he asked again.
She glanced up from the scope. “Sorry,” she said, turning from the table to face Gabriel. “Just making sure my machines are synced and ready to go.”
He watched as Knowles picked up one of the specimen containers and carried it to the capsule. She tapped the container against the surface, the soft click echoing in the quiet room. “This is the heart of the augmentation program. And no, it’s not a coffin.” She smiled. “I can see it in your eyes, and the others that have come through here thought the same thing. No, Lieutenant, this is not your
final resting place. On the contrary, this is your zero point.”
Chapter 3
Gabriel stared at the capsule, Knowles’s last two words resonating in his head. Zero point. Before he had a chance to ask the doctor what she meant, she continued.
“Zero point doesn’t refer to the mythical energy source, or the grade point average of some of the grunts I’ve met. It’s a term referred to by the Pakistani philosopher Aban Gurmani about a decade ago in his book. He used the term to signify a rebirth, but not like being born again. More of a…” Her voice trailed off as she looked up at the ceiling. “A new beginning. A starting point. Nowhere to go but up. When I was involved in the planning stages of the augmentation program a few years ago, I was reading Gurmani’s book, and I thought it was an apt description of what we do.”
She walked back to the table and picked up another container. She turned back to Gabriel, holding them both out in front of her. “These are my machines. These will give you a new beginning, Lieutenant Gabriel.”
Gabriel looked at Knowles, then at the capsule, then back to Knowles. He still wasn’t completely sure what was happening. Machines. New beginning. Augmentation. He glanced back at the door, but Biermann wasn’t suddenly standing there with answers. Not that Gabriel trusted him for answer. He had a growing suspicion that Biermann concealed much more than he gave up. But at least Biermann knew what the hell this woman, this program, were all about.
“The rumors that you’ve heard, I’m sure, are probably pretty accurate,” she said, pulling his attention back to her. “Although to be quite honest, I really hate the acronym. Hammers. Sounds like stupid, blunt tools used as overkill. You, like the others before you, are neither stupid nor blunt. Are you?”
Gabriel still stared at the two containers Knowles held. He looked up at her face, where her eyes bored into his. “No ma’am. Er, doc.”
“The augmentation project was created to give the NAF better soldiers,” Knowles continued. “Not blunt tools but surgical, powerful, intelligent instruments. I’m proud to be associated with the project. And you,” she said as she pointed to Gabriel with one of the containers, “should be proud to have been selected. Very few make it through the preliminaries from what I understand.”
Gabriel: Zero Point (Evan Gabriel Trilogy) Page 2
