by Terry Mixon
“Gentlemen,” she said, her voice tinged with her Indian homeland. “I’m pleased that we can meet privately. We have much to discuss.”
“I brought a number of items to show the General Assembly, Madam Secretary General,” Rogers said. “I believe they will settle any concern that they might have about the authenticity of what Secretary of State Queen said yesterday.”
She waved her hand. “I don’t need to see trinkets. Your men may wait in the assistant’s office with your evidence while we discuss this matter more privately.”
That surprised Queen somewhat. He’d expected her to want to see all the alien gadgets. He certainly wanted to.
Once the doors were closed, Almen gestured them toward seats. “We have refreshments, if you like.”
“No need for me,” Rogers said.
Queen waved his hand in agreement.
“Perfect,” she said, sitting primly on her chair. “Now, before you launch into your attempt at convincing me that you have found aliens and their abandoned bases, I’ll tell you that that isn’t necessary. I’ve known about them for some time.”
She smiled at them brightly. “You’ve both met my associate, Brenda Cabot. Though it’s something of a risk, I’m revealing myself as a member of the Families to you both. That should save us some time and allow us to focus on the most important thing: stopping the Asharim and their henchmen like Ambassador Chen.”
Queen sat in stunned silence, words failing him completely for the first time in a long while.
Harry blinked at the woman, her statement knocking him off his stride. “Seriously?”
He looked at Queen. “And you felt comfortable saying so in front of him?”
She smiled at Queen. “The secretary of state knows that without proof, he won’t be able to tell anyone else. I’ve served in the UN for many years, and my reputation is solid. No one is really aware of the Families outside a small circle. Oh, word is spreading that some group might exist because of the witch hunt Mr. Queen started, but he hasn’t had any luck finding any moles that belong to us.”
“It’s annoying that you know that,” Queen said, “but accurate. We’ve found a number of people spying, but they’ve worked for the normal national intelligence agencies. No one we’ve spoken with has been part of your group. Other than Cabot’s name, can you prove that statement? A spy might know all that.”
Harry nodded. “That’s very true. We have a lot of players.”
“Of course. Your group is exploring a frozen version of Earth out beyond the orbit of Pluto—which is a planet, no matter what those moronic astronomers claim—and you brought back a cat for Brenda to examine.”
That proved her claim to Harry, but Queen was frowning. “A cat? Seriously?”
“Indeed. A mechanical construct so lifelike that it’s indistinguishable from a real one without the appropriate equipment. It even behaves like one.”
“Wait,” Queen said. “I’m still not sure what you mean by ‘a frozen version of Earth.’ Could you explain that, please?”
Harry turned in his seat toward Queen. “We’ve found a large, frozen world outside the orbit of Pluto with an Asharim station nearby. It really is another Earth, right down to the shape of the continents. Oddly, it’s not the same as our Earth.”
“Oddly, you say?” Queen said, shaking his head. “Another Earth of any kind is more than odd. How did it get there? How could it exist at all? That’s crazy. Not even aliens could do that.”
“We agree,” Almen said. “The Asharim could not possibly have created something like that or brought it from some other time or reality. Whatever that dead world is, wherever it came from, the Asharim had nothing to do with it.”
“From another time? From another reality? What are you saying?”
“That this frozen Earth—which Jess has taken to calling Earth-B—is from hundreds of years in our subjective future. Since the people on it have been dead on the order of ten thousand years, that means time travel on a massive scale or that the world came from another dimension. We’re leaning toward another dimension due to data I’m not ready to reveal.
“In any case, the existence of that world is very secret. We did show it to Commander Krueger, but he probably hasn’t had a chance to brief you yet. Brenda has obviously gotten the word out.”
He focused his attention on Almen. “Since I don’t have to explain everything to you, what shall we talk about? Chen and his heavy-worlder secret society?”
“Partly,” she said. “We also need to discuss what you should and probably should not mention to the General Assembly and the reporters. I do recommend you take the opportunity to speak to both. Since the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, you might as well keep the general populace from dismissing this as a strange hoax.
“You also need to find a way to stop the budding global war. That will kill millions and leave our world in ruins. We have to avoid that kind of senseless violence at all costs.”
“I can talk to Chen, but I’m not the one he’s at war with, though that’ll change soon enough. It’s the United States that’s in the mud with China—the heavy-worlder descendants, really—and Secretary Queen is going to have to be there.”
“We have word that the Chinese state has fallen and that the losers have vanished,” Almen said. “I would expect that this group is now running the show there more openly. If the two of you could defuse the conflict enough to avoid mass casualties, that would be extremely helpful.”
“I have a few ideas on that,” Queen admitted. “Not that I expect to make much of an impact on the damned fight with them directly. No, I think this is going to have to be public relations judo.”
Harry felt himself frowning. “What does that mean?”
Queen grinned. “That’s going to be a lesson in higher-level diplomatic operations for you, I suspect. You’re a man of action. I’m a man of words. Sometimes words can spike things so that a course of action is no longer prudent.
“For example, if I set things up correctly, all the pretext for war goes away and continued fighting makes them a diplomatic pariah. The rest of the global community might be inclined to side with us, and no matter how powerful the Chinese are, they can’t fight the whole world.
“If I can make something like that happen, then everything goes covert. They’ll still attack you on Mars, no matter what they say publicly, but they’ll have constraints on what kind of actions they can execute. That has to be the main goal here.”
“It sounds as if the two of you have your plans ready,” Secretary General Almen said, rising gracefully from her seat. “I hope you’re both adept at making this work. If you’re not, China may feel it has nothing left to lose by using their nuclear arsenal. Good luck.”
15
Jess took the lander down as slowly as she could, but that was still damned fast. Relying on skills she didn’t actually know that she had until her hands performed the actions of their own accord was nerve-wracking.
She chose to come down into the atmosphere a long way off from the city where the space elevator was secured. No need to let them hear the sonic boom of her deceleration. She then came in toward it at a much slower pace.
The idea of a space elevator intrigued her. It had to be seriously overengineered for them to be comfortable putting the station above a city. If something broke the cable, the destruction on the surface would be significant.
Once she was close to the city, she asked Vidar where they could land that wasn’t too distant from their ultimate destination. She took his advice but landed about an eighth of a turn around the city to make sure he wasn’t leading her straight into a trap.
The scent of the foliage was intriguing once they’d all exited the lander. Not at all Earth-like, but still nice. Almost like pine, but with a hint of something sweet that she couldn’t identify.
“How are we handling this?” Sandra asked. As the nominal head of Jess’s personal security, she actually had the authority to tell Jess how th
ings were going to be, but the woman was willing to accept that there was some risk associated with this mission. Harry’s men were following her lead.
“We go into the city and find the heavy-worlder habitation,” Jess said. “We’re not skulking along, no matter how careful I’m being. We have to speak with these priests, and that means getting up close to them. We just don’t want to get shot doing it.”
“Copy that,” the sniper said. She then started directing the forces at her command—except for the guards watching the three prisoners—to move ahead of them and start scouting the path forward.
The city was amazing. It was obviously in ruins, but the buildings were still standing after a thousand years. That was truly astonishing.
It matched up with what Harry had seen on Volunteer World, with the old Asharim city there. Even the architecture matched the images that they’d brought back, though they’d taken the pictures from quite a distance.
Harry was going to lead the Volunteers and other troops there to gain control of the gates, at least long enough for Kevin to get the addresses to the human colonies, assuming of course that the heavy-worlders didn’t capture her people and lock them away.
If so, Harry would be coming here with blood in his eye and an “I told you so” on his lips. So she’d like to avoid that outcome if at all possible.
The area between the buildings looked as if it had always been intended for foot traffic. She supposed the high-tech aliens used antigravity to fly high above the peons who’d be forced to walk below. That sounded like them. Make the lesser races walk where they could look down and see them.
If she ever met an Asharim face to face, she was going to punch his lights out.
“How many people live here now?” she asked Vidar. “The city seems as if it would have once held tens of millions.”
“Less than ten thousand, all told,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “That’s only a rough guess. Not all the inhabitants are friendly to my people. As it matters little, we allow that.”
“Do you mean other heavy-worlders?” she asked as she stepped around a hunk of rock that had plummeted from hundreds of feet above them, probably long before she’d been born.
“Some,” he admitted. “There are other races that once served the Masters, and they have their own enclaves. Some are friendly, others less so. A couple are outright hostile, but we are nowhere near them. Even this slightly altered path you have chosen should be safe enough to reach my people safely.”
The news that other alien species were here both excited and worried her. They’d eventually need to contact them all, and she was certain that there’d be fighting. That saddened her, but they’d do the best they could.
What worried her now was when the first observer spotted them. It would happen before much longer, if it hadn’t already happened. With all these tall buildings, it would be very simple for someone to keep an eye out from a great distance.
Would those inevitable watchers rain fire down on the intruders? The heavy-worlders had access to Asharim weapons and some technology. Sandra was an experienced soldier, and as a sniper, she undoubtedly knew the ways of ambushes. That was probably why she had the group so spread out.
When the time came, would that be enough to stop an attack or at least mitigate the risk? Jess hoped so.
Her questions were answered less than five minutes later when a single heavy-worlder woman stepped out from a building ahead of the group, her arms held out to her sides, palms up and empty.
“Stand fast,” Sandra said over the com earbuds they all wore. “Jess, I need you up front.”
“Coming,” she said, but she turned to face Kerrick Vidar. “I’d rather we didn’t get into a second battle while I’m trying to undo the first one. Any advice?”
“Take me with you,” he said. “I can make certain that you’re at least offered safe passage to the temple. After that, your fate is in the hands of the priests.”
She considered his plea and shrugged. “Just remember that if we get ambushed, bad things are going to happen to you too. Be convincing.”
“If they are talking, they aren’t shooting. My guards are in the buildings above us right now and could kill all of you without too much danger to me or my companions. This is a known challenge point, and we have a procedure to give the watchers instructions. Please note that I didn’t tell them to kill you all.”
“So you say,” Jess said back. “I think we understand one another well enough to recognize the consequences of any misunderstandings.”
With that said, she gestured for the guards to allow Vidar to accompany her forward. This could turn out very badly for all of them, so she hoped the man was being serious. If not, she might die in the next few minutes.
Brenda was surprised when Doctor Granger called her back to the makeshift medical center only a few hours after Karl had gone into the sarcophagus. Jess had been inside the machine for three days. This was more like three hours.
“Is something wrong?” she asked as she came through the door, stopping abruptly when she saw Karl sitting in a chair beside the sarcophagus, clad only in a pair of shorts that did nothing to hide his exceptional physique.
Or the missing scars. He’d had a number of healed wounds that she’d taken the time to find in her exploration of his body last night: knife wounds, bullet entry and exit points, and one that he’d had to tell her was a very bad rope burn on his left leg.
All of them appeared to be gone, though she’d have to check more thoroughly later to be sure. The Navy SEAL had been healed of his past injuries.
He’d also lost some of the ruggedness that age had brought him. Rather than a rugged man in his forties, he was now a chiseled one in his mid-twenties. The same biological age that the machine had brought Jessica Cook back to, and from what she’d heard, Kathleen Bennet.
“Well, that was quick,” she said, partially covering her gap in the conversation. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” he said. “Really good, actually. I hadn’t realized how much low-level pain I was dealing with from some of the injuries I’d suffered over the years. Or from getting older. My knees are particularly happy.”
Brenda nodded and pulled up a chair across from him. Todd Granger sat as well, making a triangle of the three.
The doctor picked up the thread. “The process took a lot less time, perhaps because he wasn’t as gravely injured as Jess. We have no idea how long Kathleen Bennett was in the box, but it could have been longer because of the age that needed to be regenerated away. We’ll have to conduct more experiments as time permits.
“I’ve spot checked him on a few things. He does know how to speak the heavy-worlder language and has a familiarity with the same test devices Jess was able to work. As far as I can see, it worked the same for both of them.”
“Consistency is good,” she said. “What do you think of what I was offering now, Karl?”
“The jury is still out, but I’m warming to the exchange. He’s got a lot of other things to work on and having more data will help him. No need to get his blood pressure up before we can actually tell him anything.”
“What do you remember of the process?” Granger asked.
“Nothing. The lid closed, and I was out like a light with the switch turned off. I woke up as soon as the lid started opening. Needless to say, I feel refreshed. What now? More testing while Brenda takes a turn inside?”
“More testing is certainly on the program,” Granger said. “I’m not sure we should be rushing this process, though. We have time. Why do you need to go inside today, Brenda? What do you get out of it that you can’t wait for? You’re a young woman, so I doubt it’s vanity. What makes this something you don’t want to put off?”
She started to answer but stopped herself and really thought about it. Was there a driving need to risk this process, which they admittedly knew very little about? Would the gain be worth the risk?
“One of the problems about our understanding of
the Asharim is that we don’t know what we don’t know,” she said after almost a minute of contemplation. “We need to understand what we find in this base we’re looking for. Hell, we need the same from all the locations we’re going to be exploring over the next few months.
“Harry is going to take a force to seize the Asharim city on Volunteer World, so he’ll need Jess or someone like her to make sense of what they find. I want the same for us.”
He nodded. “But that doesn’t have to be you. Why be the first in line?”
“Because she’s not going to ask her people to do something that she wouldn’t do herself,” Karl said. “She’ll take the risk to make sure it’s safe for the rest of you.”
“Forgive me for being blunt, but that’s silly,” Granger said firmly. “We all know the risks that this might entail. There’s no need for our leader to try every dangerous stunt that we might have to execute. I can’t stop her if she insists, I just want her to consider why she’s pushing this.”
Brenda sighed. “I suppose you’re right, but this is something that I have to do. Could I wait until we know it’s safe? Yes. I’d still be in the same place of understanding if I did. Am I going to wait? No.
“I’ve taken a lot of risks for the Families over the years. Being an undercover agent in the FBI was a risky undertaking, even with some high-tech help in fooling the lie detector tests. Maybe I’m an adrenaline junkie. In any case, I’m sure that I want to do this.”
She rose to her feet. “What do I do? Just climb in?”
“You can do that,” Granger said, “but I’d recommend stripping down to your underwear, bottom only, and lie on the blanket I put in there. That’ll cause you less discomfort when you wake up.”
He turned to Karl. “Why don’t you get dressed, and we’ll do some more testing while she goes through the process?”
The Navy officer nodded. “After we get something to eat. I’m starving.”
