The coup de grâce and Nick Reed special: the VLF transmitting antenna was still neatly coiled in a cargo bay storage hold. In all the chaos surrounding the encounters with the BLUMOs, the crew had never found time to retrieve and install it. Carillo savored the irony. A makeshift VLF antenna had saved the Cetus Prime crew, including Nick. Now it might save Carillo and Shilling from Nick’s treachery.
She now explained her ramshackle solutions to Shilling. “After we install new parts into Recon-3 and Cargo-4, I’ll go out for an EVA to attach Recon-3 to the instrument array and replace Cargo-4’s antenna.”
She told him she would utilize a combination of the clamps from the docking platform, EMU safety tethers and a portion of the VLF antenna to anchor the Recon. With its new UHF radio equipment in working order and its engine still functional, the probe would provide the ship with propulsion. Aiding in that effort would be Cargo-4.
To sync up the direction of the two probes’ engine thrust, she would have to secure Recon-3 with its nose cone pointing toward the port side of the ship, while Cargo-4’s nose, docked into the starboard side of the ship, pointed toward Rorschach’s port side.
“You mean we’ll be flying sideways?”
“Yep, our port side will be the new bow.”
“How will we be able to tell which direction we need to head if we can’t see where we’re going?” Shilling asked. “We don’t have a navigation system.”
“Hello, trustee of the Green Bank Observatory here. Former astronaut. Aerospace engineering professor. I know how to read the stars. During my EVA, I’ll take a peek at our orientation and use the probe thrusters to orient us toward Earth.” Though Carillo tried to make it sound easy, she knew it would be tricky to coordinate Recon-3’s and Cargo-4’s engines and thrusters without the aid of Kiera’s fleet management software. “Besides, we only have to get started in the right direction; Mayaguana will take care of the rest.”
She explained that without radio equipment to message Mayaguana, their only communications capability would take the form of telemetry transmitted by the two probes’ UHF antennas to Mission Control. Each time the probes were powered on or off, their embedded software automatically pinged Mayaguana to report their status.
“Presuming Mission Control receives the transmissions, Cargo-4’s docking clamp and airlock sensors will tell them it’s still docked with Rorschach,” Carillo said. “Then they should notice Recon-3’s position relative to Cargo-4 and realize it’s also connected to the ship. I have to believe Mayaguana will ping back and request another round of telemetry, which will give them our heading and velocity.”
“And they’ll course-correct for us,” Shilling said.
“That’s what I’m counting on. They can activate the fleet management software from Mission Control and remotely guide us home.”
Holding cell — Suhkai refinery
Saturn moon Dione
Kiera was so sore she couldn’t roll over without experiencing shooting pains in her arms, abdomen and pelvis. With each groan of discomfort, the Cyton assigned to monitor her circled above the bed and queried, “Hurt? Help?”
“Of course I’m hurt, bitch. Of course I need help,” Kiera thought. “You want to help me? Help me escape.”
But Kiera knew the retort would do no good. She’d given an approximation of the same answer dozens of times already. The ball of light would flicker, but it never replied. It just hovered like a drone conducting surveillance. That was its purpose. The alien was nothing more than the equivalent of a nurse call button.
This time, however, the Cyton replied. “Why escape?”
The question almost made Kiera burst out laughing. Let’s see…where to begin…oh, I know…how about being carried like a dead, plucked chicken from the inoculation room. No? Not good enough for you? Then how about being held against my will? Or separated from my companions? Better yet, how about the needle marks on my arms and pelvis? The fresh scar beneath my navel or the raw skin between my legs?
She picked her head up off the bed and screamed at the Cyton. “I’m not a fucking barn animal!”
Each time the Suhkai entered the room, they administered an injection. Kiera always resisted, but no amount of biting, kicking or screamed expletives were effective against the Suhkai. The creatures were too big and too strong for five-foot-three, one-hundred-thirty-five-pound Kiera. And each time she woke up, she had more needle marks and her pain was worse.
“Why fight Suhkai? Suhkai help you.”
Kiera leapt from the bed, pulled off her gown and pointed to the needle marks, scar and reddened skin. “This is help? The Suhkai aren’t helping me. They’re hurting me!”
“Help make new humans.”
Kiera supposed the alien thought this tidbit would ease her suffering, but it only enraged her more. “I don’t want to make new humans! I want to go home. You want to help me? Help me escape! Help me find my friends. Help us go home!”
The Cyton did not respond.
Kiera snatched up her gown and pulled it back on. She turned to the bobbing light and asked, “Why? Why are you doing this? Why are you helping them?”
The Cyton was quick to answer. “Save humans.”
Recovery room — Suhkai spacecraft Ethel
In orbit around Saturn moon Dione
Morgan sat on the floor, back against the wall, head lowered. He wanted to believe the conversation with the Suhkai and Nick had been a nightmare, but the welt on the back of his neck from Maggie’s shock was evidence to the contrary.
How could Avery, Christine and Nick have come up with such a monstrous plan? How could they not see the evil, the selfishness, inherent in it? Had the long years in space warped their morality?
A thought formed in his mind. “Necessary.”
He looked up, but could see no Cyton in the room. He stood, thinking the alien might be hovering behind the sleeping pod in the room’s center, but still saw no ball of light. Recalling the BLUMOs’ ability to camouflage their presence, he said, “Show yourself.”
Over several seconds, a large golden ball of light appeared, hovering at arm’s length from his face. Unless Cytons could randomly change size, this Cyton was not Maggie. This one was the Callisto queen.
“You can access my thoughts,” Morgan said aloud.
“Yes.” The Cyton flickered.
“You are the one who was with us before we docked?”
“Yes.”
“Then you lied. You’re not a friend. You’re a fiend.” Morgan returned to his sitting position against the wall.
“Help humans. Help each other.”
“Now there’s a laugh.” Morgan stared at the ball of light. “Nick said the Suhkai view your kind as God. You’re not like any god we worship on Earth. No, wait a minute. I take that back. At times in our history, there have been cultures that sacrificed other humans. We call them savages now. Barbarians.”
The thought that entered Morgan’s mind came from a new source. “This is not sacrifice. It is survival.”
“Dress it up any way you want, Zoor,” Morgan said. “It’s wrong. And you, your little balls of light and Nick can go to hell if you think I’m helping you in any way. Besides, you don’t need my help. If you’ve read my mind, you know that already.”
In working through the dilemma, Morgan had already reasoned it would be a simple matter for the Suhkai to fly down, scoop up Nick’s complement of breeders and zoom back into space without help from Morgan or anyone else. Cytons would disable the unsuspecting satellite eyes and ears orbiting Earth, allowing Suhkai ships to approach the planet undetected. They would target a remote population, one with little or no defenses — say, an isolated island, or a resort catering to young adults and families. If Nick had been monitoring Earth telecommunications for as long as he claimed, Morgan was sure he had already selected his target.
Morgan didn’t know whether Cytons could survive in the lower levels of Earth’s atmosphere, since they’d never been observed below the ionosphe
re, but if they could, it would be no challenge for a swarm of them to camouflage and zap two hundred people into unconsciousness in seconds. From there, the Suhkai would storm the area and collect their quarry. When the clueless humans awoke, they would be bald, blue and ready for breeding.
“You misunderstand the assistance Nick seeks. In fact, there is much you do not understand.”
Morgan laughed. “Is this the part where you try to convince me of the virtue in enslaving the innocent?”
“Do you know what a magwave is?”
“No, and I don’t care.”
The Cyton floated over to Morgan. “You should. Magwaves saved Nick, Christine and Avery. They could save your race, too…or destroy it.”
He pulled up his knees and wrapped his forearms around them. Staring at the ball of light, he said, “Magwave…a magnetic wave.”
The ball flickered. Zoor answered. “Yes, a very powerful magnetic wave. Cytons have used them to travel throughout the universe for longer than your planet has existed.”
The door opened, and in walked Zoor. The ten-foot alien loomed over the seated Morgan, and the Cyton rose and circled the Suhkai female’s head. When it attained enough speed to form a solid halo around Zoor’s crest, a bright flash lit up the room.
Morgan shielded his eyes.
When he opened them again, the Cyton was gone, and Zoor was seated in front of him, sitting Indian-style. She smiled, and the tubes on the crest of her elongated head vibrated. The voice of a human woman emanated from them. “We have been practicing our human speech together. Hopefully, y’all can understand me.”
The twang was evidence of Nick’s influence. It was hardly appropriate to laugh, but that’s what Morgan did. “They’d love you down South.”
This quip seemed to please Zoor. Her mouth and crest tubes vibrated in unison.
Morgan moved his legs to form a similar posture as Zoor’s. “So, am I speaking to Zoor? To the Cyton queen from Callisto? Or both of you?”
Zoor reached out her hands. “It is I, Zoor. Can we start anew? Forget what y’all heard from Nick. We are here to help. You do not know it because of your anger, but you need our help.”
Morgan’s hands remained in his lap. “Can you both still read my mind?”
“Yes.”
“Then free my crew. When you do that…when they are here with me…we can start anew. We’ll all take a stroll to my ship. Y’all can come aboard, we’ll undock from Ethel, and then we can talk about magwaves all you want.”
Zoor retracted her hands. “That is impossible.”
“Thought so. We have an expression on Earth. Bullshit walks.” Morgan used his fingers to imitate a person walking away.
“It is impossible because your friends are not here.”
“Excuse me?”
“Ajay and Kiera are on the moon below, the moon you call Dione. Julia and Bob are aboard your ship. It is far from here.”
A thought passed through Morgan’s mind before he could stop it. “Divide and conquer.”
“Yes, that was Nick’s intent,” Zoor said. “He believed you would find a way to free them if they stayed here. He considers you very resourceful. Very dangerous.”
“Does he now? Is that why he sent you two instead of coming here himself?”
“Nick is near death. Very near.”
Morgan couldn’t decide which was worse: traveling this far to discover Nick was dead, or finding him alive but maniacal and teamed up with aliens who were just as evil.
“We are not evil.”
“Then you must come from a pretty fucked-up place.”
Zoor reached out again, and this time she gripped Morgan’s hands in her gigantic paws. His mind filled with a vision of a black star spinning faster than any Cyton. A fissure ripped across its surface, and a bolt of energy fired out.
Morgan pulled his hands away and looked up at the Suhkai. What she had just shown him was a lethal gamma burst from a magnetar. “We call magwaves by a different name,” he said. “Gamma bursts.”
She extended her hands once more. Morgan accepted their embrace this time, and a new vision appeared. It showed a smaller Suhkai vessel, one that looked like the one Nick and the others had photographed on Callisto. At its leading edge, a spinning ball of Cytons drew close to a dark but glowing mass. In an acrobatic maneuver worthy of a supersonic jet pilot, the spinning ball turned hard, pulling the spacecraft with it. An instant later, a crack formed in the glowing mass and a bolt shot forth. The spacecraft and Cytons were swept up into it, and they disappeared in a flash of light.
“My God,” Morgan said. He recalled Nick Reed’s final message extracted from Cetus Prime’s logs: we’re off to go where they went with our UMOs leading the way.
The Cytons knew how to create starquakes…and they had shown the Suhkai how to ride them. That must have appealed to Nick, the California surfer. He, Avery and Christine had ridden a wave to Tula. A magnetic wave.
“Not just one wave,” Zoor said. “Many waves. We think of distance differently than Nick, differently than humans. But in human terms, Nick, Christine and Avery traveled over forty trillion kilometers to reach Tula…with a number of stops on the way. There is an entire network of magnetars spread throughout the galaxy.”
A new vision infiltrated Morgan’s thoughts. He tried to pull his hands back, but Zoor gripped them tight. He saw the chiseled black mission commander Avery Lockett, and beside him stood Christine Baker, the vibrant, freckled redhead. She smiled as she cupped her arms around two small children. In front of them both sat Nick, with a third child in his lap. Behind them was a sky of lavender and a meadow of green.
“They ask for your help, Skywalker. Not for evil reasons as you suppose, but for good,” Zoor said. “Come. It is time for you to see what I mean.”
Mission Control
A3rospace Industries Command and Control Center
Mayaguana Island, The Bahamas
Dante gazed at the photo-badge while his thumb circled Kiera’s smiling face. He closed his eyes and recalled riding a bobbing paddleboard next to her, watching Jupiter rise. That had been only three months ago, but it now seemed an eternity in the past.
Most of the controllers around him were practically catatonic, their lifeless glares riveted to computer consoles devoid of data. Amato and Pritchard were passed out on cots. No one spoke. The only sounds in Mission Control came from Amato’s open-mouthed snores.
And 450 million kilometers away, radio signals from Recon-3 and Cargo-4 had just begun their lonely, twenty-five-minute journey toward A3rospace Industries’ tracking and data relay satellite.
Dante laid his head on the desktop of his station and sighed. In his hand, he clutched the photo-badge.
Tula habitat – Suhkai spacecraft Ethel
In orbit around Saturn moon Dione
Zoor led Morgan into an airlock, and the door closed behind them. Immediately Morgan felt a heavy pressure against his chest. Steam filled the chamber, and he struggled to breathe. He had to bend over and grab hold of his knees, sucking in air like he’d just raced up a hill. To his surprise, Zoor struggled even more than he did; she fell to her knees and gasped.
Just as it seemed they both might pass out, Morgan heard a click. The steam began to thin, and the door at the far end of the chamber opened.
As the haze dissipated, Morgan couldn’t believe his eyes. Nor could his ears reconcile the sounds. Through the open door, a forest of trees swayed in a light breeze. Bird calls filled the air. It made no sense. If Morgan didn’t know better, he would have thought he’d just stepped out of the ship onto an alien planet. Yet this, all of this, this entire place — was inside the spaceship Ethel. How was such a feat even possible?
Most unbelievable of all was the blond-haired girl in a frilly dress who pushed through some ferns and dashed toward the Suhkai.
“Zoorie!” she cried.
The girl crashed into the alien’s shin and squeezed her leg. She smiled up at Morgan and said, “Hi! I’m
Annie. You’re Nicky’s friend Skywalker. Your clothes look funny.”
Morgan just stared at the child. He was too stunned to answer.
The ferns rustled once more, and two teenagers appeared — a brown-skinned boy and a blond-haired white girl. The girl was clearly pregnant. Very pregnant.
Annie now attached herself to Morgan’s leg. “You didn’t answer me. Are you Skywalker? Do you come from Earth? We come from Tula. It’s far from Earth. You want to see pictures of our home?”
Zoor picked up the girl and held her in her arms. “Skywalker is a little surprised, Annie. I did not tell him he was going to meet you.”
The two teenagers came to a stop in front of Morgan and studied him with fascination. The pregnant girl asked, “Where are the others, Zoorie?”
“They will be here soon,” the Suhkai said. “Skywalker, let me introduce you to Sarah and John. Sarah is Nick’s daughter with Christine. John is Avery’s and Christine’s son.”
Numb, absolutely numb, Morgan swooned. John had to wrap his arm around Morgan’s shoulder to prevent him from tipping over.
Annie reached out to Morgan. “I want a hug, too!” The freckled child peeled from the safety of Zoor’s arm and wrapped her arms around Morgan’s neck.
Zoor said, “And this little ball of energy is Nick’s daughter with Sarah. As you can see, Sarah’s about to add another member to the growing Reed-Baker-Lockett family. The child will be John and Sarah’s first. A boy. Nick and Christine’s eldest child, Tina, lives with Avery and her mother on Tula. At last count, with the assistance of my people, the Tula wing of the family numbered five, but the last communication from Avery is several years old. By now Tina, like Sarah, is of age to breed, and there are likely more Tulan children scampering about.”
Morgan carried Annie as the group walked deeper into the spaceship-enclosed habitat. To Morgan’s slipper-covered feet, the ground felt like real soil. Actual drops of rain fell on his head and shoulders. He looked up through the canopy of trees at a purplish sky where two moons, one faint and small, the other bright and huge, hovered. He smelled flowers and heard the gurgle of a nearby stream.
Magwave (The Rorschach Explorer Missions Book 2) Page 28
