Stunned, he fired back, "How did you manage to communicate with them? You told me you couldn't."
"Captain Steele managed to hook some of the internal communications wirings inside the ship up, and I was able to communicate with it. The ship has communication fail safes through its system and will communicate with the nearest command machine, and that happens to be us. Parts of the craft survived the crash while other pieces fell into the water. Captain Steel and Sergeant Navarro are trying to figure out what planet we are on, and how to reach Command."
All this happened while he had been unconscious? Argus sure had been busy. He felt used, just a body Argus was fully using to his advantage. He hoped if Command ever found them, they would be able to extract the pieces of Argus from his mind.
"Has Captain Steele been able to figure out what happened to us?"
"The ships log files say the wormhole collapsed, and we were caught in some kind of loop between the past and future. Eventually, the energy inside the wormhole became too much, and we were spit out. The ship does not know where we are exactly in space or in time. We could be several years in the future or several years back in time. It is still trying to calculate where we are exactly. This a region our computers are not familiar with."
We’re lost in time! This was not good at all. Argus sounded so matter of fact while he wanted to move, shout, or punch something. The time scientists had been trying to figure out how to reverse time and plot it. To send back a team of Echo Marines to when the humanoids were not so technologically strong and destroy them. Had command done this to them? Used them as an experiment?
"Why was I selected to have you implanted in my brain a month before this mission?" Gideon asked, and he had a feeling he was not going to like the answer.
"There are four of us. I am Argus II, and I am currently trying to find Argus I, the other Echo Marines from the Alcas wormhole. That team should be on this planet. There seems to be a huge magnetic field surrounding this planet, making communication harder with any implant."
"What if the poor sap who had Argus I didn't survive?"
"That is a possibility. If so, there are two more Argus coming here, if this is the correct place command needed. Command wanted to make sure at least one of the team members who was carrying an Argus survived."
"So, you were basically bullshitting me about me dying and needing to integrate yourself like some leech to me?"
"No, I am not lying. You did suffer a catastrophic stroke and parts of your brain cells had starved and died. My purpose was to slowly merge with you, and then take complete control of you. I did not have the opportunity to do that with you. Either I became part of you now, or I disappeared forever, so I made the decision to exist with you still being you."
Gideon was stunned. He knew command was desperate to win against the humanoids, but to sacrifice Echoes without even letting them know what the mission was, or how it would eventually mean losing yourself to an implant was pure evil. He should have retired two years ago.
With his robotic eye and brain, he was becoming a humanoid. Shit, he probably would have been volunteered for this mission. Why all this secrecy? Argus wasn't telling him the whole truth about this. What is Argus’s mission?
"So, almighty Argus, are you telling me the whole truth? What is your mission? What if command miscalculated and landed us in the wrong time or in a different universe, what then?"
"Once I confirm the year we are in, I will then find a way to communicate with Command and finish my mission. If I am in the right place the other two Argus will join me. At this moment I cannot tell you what my mission is, only that when the time comes, you will not be able to stop me. And now? I need you to go back to sleep."
Gideon tried to fight the incoming darkness as he fell into a dreamless state.
To Be Continued
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Echo Marines Page 3
