Ben stood and headed out. He found his way to his old office. The door opened for him as it had in the past, reading his DNA. The lights came on, and he smelled the musty, stale smell of three years of disuse.
Strange, if they’d filed me as dead, I’d think they’d have deactivated me by now – wiped my DNA from the system registry, and emptied this office.
His things were exactly where he’d left them all that time before. On his desk, a small holograph of Olivia sat beside his terminal screen. He turned on the hardware and entered his password, then used the neuro-retinal control to bring up several scenario processing algorithms. While he frantically worked to devise countermeasures to the expected Anxeliss incursion, Field’s face appeared in a new screen to the left of his virtual workspace.
“Ben, I’ve received only four responses to the alert so far. Those four are going to have to be the team.”
“Understood. What’s their ETA?”
“They can all be here in under thirty minutes. All except one, who is on the moon. She’ll be here in about an hour.”
“Alright, thanks. Send them here to my office.”
“Got it. I’m initiating Protocol Seven. I’ll be at Establishment H-Q in Washington to provide personal protection to the System President. Contact me there in one hour with an update.”
Ben returned to running his scenarios. He let the hardware compute some probabilities based on the data he’d supplied, and decided on a priority action plan.
#
Ben had briefed three of Field’s team members upon their arrival, and now was only waiting for the fourth. Stewart, Brooks and Chin were busily working at their portable workstations, remotely repositioning satellites, making contact with field commanders and shifting personnel from place to place in an effort to close up gaps in the defense grid.
Then she walked through the door.
Everything seemed to slow to a crawl as Ben instinctively reached for the energy pistol in his desk drawer and fired on Zharaa. In his haste, he missed, and a puff of black smoke erupted from the wall beside her head.
“Hold your fire! What do you think you’re doing?” she screamed.
The other three were all wide-eyed. Chin dove to restrain Ben, and Stewart was instantly speaking with Field on his viewscreen, suggesting Ben was too unstable to work this mission.
As Ben looked closer, he saw that Zharaa was not wearing her Uxay. The clues quickly fell into place, and Ben realized he’d just fired on the love of his life.
“Olivia?” he said, lowering his weapon.
“In the flesh, no thanks to you,” she said. “Why are you trying to kill me?”
“I thought you were Zharaa. The Anxeliss implanted false information in my mind, including a duplicate of you. It’s complicated.”
“Just promise not to shoot me, and I’ll let you explain it all to me later. Right now, there’s a mission to complete.”
Ben’s stomach was in knots. He wanted so much to just sit and talk with her, and to hold her in his arms. But the situation was dire, and he would only have time to give her the vital information of the moment. Besides, with the other team members present, they were forced to maintain a façade – no one could know they had a personal relationship, or they’d both be banished from the Program.
After a short period of additional prep work, Stewart, Brooks and Chin left Ben’s office to begin initiating the defense plan. Olivia and Ben found themselves alone.
“Ben,” she said, placing her hand on his desk and gently touching his finger with her own – the most intimacy they could hope to get away with at this location. “All this time I’ve been fighting a battle between facts and hope. I just couldn’t accept that you were dead, despite the lack of evidence to the contrary. After you disappeared, I volunteered to be on one of the search teams. When they shut down the recovery operation, I didn’t leave the moon. I never gave up the search. I’ve been taking other assignments, but then I always go back to try to track you down. I even refused to attend your funeral – I never stopped believing.”
Ben paused while it all sunk in. “And I’ve spent the last three years being brainwashed into believing that you were dead. Then they convinced me that you were alive, only it wasn’t you, it was an imposter. They even read my mind and tricked me into believing that the imposter had shared memories of our last times together. I realize now that it was all a trick, because somehow they were able to get inside my head.”
“I read some of the data on the way here,” said Olivia, getting to business. “These Anxeliss, how are they planning to take us down?”
“They intend to destroy the Program, so Earth will be defenseless. They are going to attack from the inside. They wanted to use me to take out Field and subvert the Program, but now that I’ve spoiled that plan, I imagine they will probably just send their fleet, which is most likely already en route.”
“Any ideas?”
“I’ve run some scenarios on the hardware. One of the variables is their weaponry. They never gave me much information on that, so it’s hard to say what they have. Obviously, they only showed me what they wanted me to know. However, I do have this, and I think it may be one of the best ways to battle them.”
Ben pointed at his Uxay.
“An angel’s halo? How’s that gonna help?” asked Olivia skeptically.
“They called it an Uxay. It’s a tool of unimaginable power. Provided they didn’t give me one with limitations, I should be able to use it to do a lot to repel them. It’s unlikely they gave me a dud, since they were expecting me to help them with the takeover.”
“So, they recruited you under false pretenses, imposed false memories on you, and sent you here to destroy your own people? They obviously don’t know you.”
“Well, I’m sure they’re kicking themselves now for ever trying to turn me, but that’s not going to stop them from trying to take us down anyway.”
“What do you have the others doing?”
“Stewart is coordinating the satellite weapons. Brooks is on his way to the Oort cloud to activate the cloaked minefield, in case any of the enemy attempt to travel here conventionally. And Chin is organizing the troops. You and I are going to stay here at Headquarters, in Field’s office. It’s most likely that they’ll transport directly there to try to collapse the Program. We’ll be here to stop them.”
“How?”
“I’ll use my Uxay to transport their Uxays a million light years away and into prehistoric times. Disarmed, we should be able to overpower them. From there it’s a simple Dord operation.”
Dord was Program lingo for “detain or destroy.” Fittingly, agents also used the term to mean “do or die.”
They headed back up to Field’s empty office, and moments later it all began. Zharaa was first to appear in the facility. She was only distinguishable from the real Olivia by her Uxay, which Ben immediately transported away. Olivia grabbed Zharaa in a choke hold and bound her with a pair of mag-cuffs. Ben found the struggle surreal to observe – two identical women fighting – one whom he hated and one whom he loved. In the end, his love conquered.
Several more Anxeliss appeared, and Ben dealt with them all the same way, assisted each time by Olivia. After a few frantic moments, the arrivals stopped.
“We never should have trusted you!” Zharaa yelled at Ben. “We didn’t realize how proficient you’d become with the Uxay, or that you would turn against us. Axo was so certain.”
“Your plan had many flaws, Zharaa,” said Ben. “The first was ever thinking that I’d help you attack my own people.”
“This isn’t over,” said Zharaa. “There’s more of us on the way, coming in ships. With or without Uxay, you’ll have no way of stopping us. We left three years ago, and should be here any time now.”
“Ben,” said Olivia. “I’ve just received word from the Oort cloud. Thirty Anxeliss ships destroyed by the minefield. Four
slipped through.”
“See, Zharaa? We’re ready for you,” said Ben.
“Four of our ships are more than enough to plough this world under,” Zharaa said with contempt.
“Ben,” Olivia reported again, staring at Ben’s terminal screen. “Satellite defenses have picked off all four remaining Anxeliss. It’s over.”
“No!” shouted Zhara and clenched her teeth in fury.
A group of security personnel arrived. “Bring them to Field. I’m sure he’ll enjoy interrogating the people who tried to destroy him,” said Ben, referring to the six captive Anxeliss in his office.
Olivia walked up to Ben and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Nice work.”
Ben breathed out a heavy sigh. “You, too. I’m just glad this nightmare is over.”
#
“Ben, you and the team have saved Earth. Saved the whole solar system. Words can’t express the appreciation of the citizens, or of the Program,” said Field.
Ben, Field, and Olivia stood on the roof of the Program Administration building, looking out over the desert. The breeze tossed their hair around, but took the edge off the afternoon heat.
“In light of your heroism, the Establishment has agreed to offer you both early retirement.”
“That’s never been done before,” Ben said.
“Ben, we can get married!” said Olivia.
“That’s right,” said Field. “Before Ben disappeared, I had suspected something was going on between you two, but without any evidence, I couldn’t pursue it. Besides, I didn’t want to. I’ve thought of Ben like a son. I know this is unprecedented, but your situation is unique. And so is what you’ve done for the Establishment. Now get out of here before they change their minds.”
Ben and Olivia bid their farewells to their long-time boss, and headed downstairs to their ground vehicle.
“Let’s get married tonight,” said Olivia.
“Alright. Where?”
“How about on a boat in Sydney Harbour?”
“Do you think Field would be willing to perform it?” asked Ben.
“All we can do is ask.”
#
The lights of Sydney sparkled on the water, and the historic Opera House shone like a white flame in the distance. Ben took Olivia’s hand in his, and turned to face Field, who’d agreed to marry them despite the Program’s protocols.
As Ben looked into Olivia’s eyes, he felt a joy like he’d never known. This all seemed too good to be true.
The thought stuck in Ben’s mind like a dagger. His training came to the surface, and he started to wonder if perhaps it was too good to be true.
And that’s when things started to change. He smelled acrid smoke coming from somewhere on the vessel, and the faint sound of an alarm. Suddenly, his viewpoint shifted. He abruptly found himself staring at the ceiling, as if he’d fallen over on his back. But it wasn’t the ceiling of the yacht. It was an unfamiliar place. Olivia’s face moved into his view.
“Ben, Ben can you hear me?”
Her hair was disheveled, and she had a gash on her cheek from which a trail of blood ran down to her collar. She was sweating heavily and seemed highly agitated.
“Wha -- what’s going on?” Ben mumbled.
“Ben, can you stand up? We have to get you out of here, now.” She lifted a thin silver ring from the top of his shaved head and tossed it aside.
“Where am I? What’s happening here?”
“You’re aboard an Anxeliss attack ship. I just disconnected their mind-control device. You’ve been lying here in a sort of stasis, being fed nutrients and a steady stream of lies. Right now, we have about four minutes to get out of here.”
“That can’t be,” Ben said. “I was just with you, we were getting married. But before that – before that they had brainwashed me. But I got out of that, and we prevented their assault on Earth.”
“All of that was an illusion, Ben. They’ve been manipulating you. Look, we need to get off this ship.”
She grabbed Ben, throwing his arm over her shoulder and helping him to stand. Ben’s joints were stiff from spending so long on his back. He looked at his body as he stood, and saw that his scars had returned. Heading toward the door, he spied his tool belt sitting in the corner of the room. He grabbed it and they left the cell behind, heading down a corridor. Smoke billowed from various open doors, and sirens blared.
“Did you do all this?” asked Ben.
“I had to do some creative engineering of this ship’s propulsion systems,” Olivia yelled over the noise. The ship rocked violently for a moment, causing them to have to brace themselves against the wall. “You know how my ground transports are always overheating, well, I put that experience to use on a large scale. I sabotaged the coolant system. We only have seconds before this entire vessel blows.”
“How are we going to get off?”
“I docked with the ship. We’ll just have to return to my shuttle and hope we can get out of the blast range in time.”
They scurried through the halls, encountering no one along the way, and finally found the vacuum port. They stepped through the airlock, closed the hatch, and stepped into the shuttle.
Olivia jumped into the pilot’s seat and fired up the engines. She broke away from the Anxeliss ship and pushed the shuttle to maximum in-system velocity. A huge explosion lit up the viewport and rocked the tiny ship.
Before the bright flare in space had a chance to dim, a figure emerged from the shuttle’s storage compartment. A hideous, barely humanoid beast with bright red skin and four arms towered over Ben. Six tusks protruded from his face, and his claws were long and sharp. Enormous drooling fangs appeared as the creature appeared to grin -- and there was something about the eyes. They stared at Ben, penetrating him.
“Axo,” Ben whispered, recognizing his captor without his disguise. He reached for his weapon, but it was not there. Thinking quickly, he grabbed his trusty metal ball from his tool belt and rushed the giant alien. He rammed the climbing tool up against Axo’s throat and activated it. The long, sharp pitons shot out of the ball, lodging in Axo’s leathery neck. Silvery blood spurted out as he staggered back.
But then Axo seemed to recover. He growled and raised his claws high in the air, preparing to strike Ben down.
A hot blast from behind Ben whizzed past his ear and burned a gaping hole straight through Axo’s chest. He fell to the floor, smoke emanating from the massive cavity. Ben turned back to see Olivia holstering her weapon. He turned back and stared at Axo’s corpse for a long moment, then moved to the front of the shuttle.
“Alright,” said Ben, settling into the co-pilot’s seat. “Explain all of this to me.”
“Three weeks ago, you disappeared.”
“The Lunatropolis mission.”
“Right.”
“Wait – that was only three weeks ago?”
“Yes – keep listening, and it’ll make sense,” Olivia said. “You’d gone dark without the appropriate protocol. I knew something was wrong, so I pleaded with Field to put me on the case. That’s when he told me about Project Dreamer.”
“And what exactly is that?”
“Field had received intel indicating that Axo was mounting an invasion of the System. Axo is that dead thing over there on the floor, and the captain of the ship we just destroyed. He was a power-hungry maniac from the Anxeliss system in Galaxy M36, who traveled from system to system, enslaving entire worlds, using his various mind-control machines to rule as a ruthless dictator over many systems.”
“Where’s his army? How did he take over alone?”
“His army was comprised of the very people he would conquer. He’d use entire civilizations against themselves, all under his mind-control. His method was simple: find a top-level defense operative – in this case, you – and abduct him. Brainwash him. Read his thoughts. Then use him.”
“And so he was planning on u
sing me, by keeping me strapped to a mind-control machine aboard his attack ship?”
“According to our intel, that’s how he coordinated his attacks.”
Ben pondered what had happened. “It was weird – it seemed like the first few hours or days I was just hanging in a void. It took a while before I even interacted with anybody in the illusion Axo created.”
“From what I understand,” said Olivia, “it can take a while for his mind-machine to drill into your psyche. It must have taken a lot longer with you because of your intense mental training. You’re a tough nut to crack,” she smiled.
“So, first, he made me believe he was a good guy,” Ben continued, talking his way through it, as much to inform Olivia as to try to make sense of it all. “He made me believe that he had recruited me to be a planet-saver with a jurisdiction of the whole universe. Then he made me think that I had figured out his game. Then he watched as I saved Earth from him in a simulated attack – even though I thought it was real – and he used my own protocols and scenarios against us. He knew everything that I would have done in that situation, and used that to come up with his attack plan.”
The pieces started to come together for Ben. He’d inadvertently given up his countermeasures and strategies. “Because he was reading my mind, he knew about our cloaked minefield in the Oort cloud. He was prepared for our satellite defenses. And he knew the internal workings of the Program like an insider – our team structures, assignments, even our codes and passwords. I gave him everything he wanted!” Ben thought back on the events and the self-recrimination started to sink in. “So, by making me believe that I had saved Earth, I had actually doomed it, because Axo knew the strategy that I would use to help the Program and the Establishment defend Earth.”
“You had no way to know that he was using you Ben.”
“But I played right into his hands.”
“You were under his influence for three weeks straight, Ben. You’ve fared amazingly well. Our data indicates that most of his previous abductees don’t usually last nearly as long. And they usually end up practically brain dead. You have shown remarkable mental stamina and strength of will. Besides . . . you didn’t actually give Axo what he needed.”
Spies: 7 Short Stories Page 11
