“I’m Captain Marquez. Can you—”
“Look, Captain,” Jason cut him off. “While I’m sorry for the loss of your ship, we don’t have time for chit-chat. The people responsible for destroying the Vanguard and laying all this whoop-ass on Orion are on their way here now. We have to leave.”
The grief-stricken captain straightened his back, like any good CDF officer would. “You’re right.”
“I can’t leave the sphere, Captain,” the civilian man said.
“Professor Petit,” Marquez began, “you have no choice.”
Petit?
“If you stay here—”
Footsteps echoed outside the antechamber. A lot of them. Everyone turned to the entrance.
“Too late,” Tyler said with a forlorn expression.
“Can we have our guns back now?” Jason asked the major. But Tyler was right, it really was too late.
“Take up defensive positions!” the Marine yelled at his men.
The assailants came streaming through the entrance and everyone dived for cover. Their attackers were covered in black from head to toe with full body armor and helmets atop their heads. The mysterious soldiers raised their unique weapons, which curved from their shoulder down to their hands, and fired.
Green bolts shot forth and dust and rock kicked up, creating a blinding haze. Jason pushed Tyler behind a rock formation as several blasts came their way. A Marine fell down beside them with a gaping hole through his chest. Jason quickly grabbed the dead stomper’s rifle and joined Tyler with what little protection they had.
“So,” Tyler said, “I guess Conrad was right after all.”
“We’re not dead yet.” Jason pointed the gun over the rock and fired off a few shots, but the bullets simply bounced off their armor. “We might as well be firing popguns at these guys.” He scanned the antechamber to see how everyone else was faring, but it was hard to make out with all the weapon fire and dirt flying about.
Jason took his chance and discharged a few more shots. But it was no use. “They just keep coming!”
A blood-curdling wail escaped the Marine major’s lungs on the other side of the antechamber, and he went flying against the rock, his lifeless body falling in a heap.
Jason peeked back over the rock as half a dozen of the soldiers converged on them. He put an apologetic hand on his brother’s shoulder, about to say sorry for dragging him into all this mess, but something stopped him.
A voice echoed around the antechamber.
“Cease fire!” it commanded.
That voice…
The soldiers stopped firing and formed a line on each side of the antechamber entrance. Then the dust settled and a figure emerged down the steps.
No…
He wore the same black-clad body armor. However, unlike the others he had no helmet obscuring his face.
How?
He wasn’t a day older than when Jason had last seen him. The day he died…
“Nash?”
Lieutenant Christian Nash walked up to Jason and smiled.
“Hello, Cassidy.”
Twenty-Three
“Is it really you?”
“It’s really me.” Nash instructed his soldiers to disarm everyone.
They took Jason’s rifle and commband from him, while he did a quick body count. The Marine major and one of his men were dead.
“But how?” he asked Nash. “You—”
“Died?” Nash smiled. “My pod was destroyed in the nebula that day, yes. But I wasn’t killed.”
“What happened?”
“You’re so impatient, Cassidy. Nothing has changed.” Nash stepped closer to him. “Just when I thought I’d tracked the Bombay down, another ship appeared. Like something from an old horror movie we used to watch at the academy. It was blacker than the night.”
Jason recalled the haunting image of the ship above Orion V. It had been burned into his mind.
“They closed on me quickly and fired. I dodged a few blasts, but they eventually got me,” Nash continued. “I thought I was dead, but when I woke up on their ship I discovered they’d spared me.”
“And they couldn’t find it in their hearts to take you home?”
“They’re a private people, as you can well see. I was never going home.” Nash gestured at the shrouded soldiers. “To be honest, even if they offered, I would’ve said no.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
Anger bubbled inside Jason. He believed his friend had been dead for four years. He’d allowed it to ruin his life. “And now? You’re serving them?”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it, but I prefer to consider myself more of a liaison, between them and you.”
“And who are they exactly?”
“They have no name. At least not that they’ve ever told me. I know them only as Seekers. They’ve been on a quest for a very long time.” Nash pointed to the sphere. “Legend has it this was hidden millions of years ago, in this sleepy part of the galaxy.” Nash stepped toward the artifact and put his hand on it. “That’s how they found me four years ago. They were searching the nebula for clues.”
“Inside a nebula?”
“The Seekers were after the same thing as us.”
“The Bombay.” Jason furrowed his brow. “Tyrell?”
Nash nodded. “Benjamin Tyrell. He wasn’t a Centauri rebel. He was a scientist at the Tokyo Institute of Advanced Sciences, just like Professor Petit. And Doctor Tai, his eventual replacement.”
Jason regarded the pair standing beside Captain Marquez.
“Doctor Tyrell was on the run because he’d threatened to expose work on the discovery of an intelligent extraterrestrial life. Unfortunately, like the crew of the Raptor, they never found him.” Nash turned to the sphere. “But good things come to those who wait. Who would have guessed it would have been humans who discovered it?”
“What does it do?” Jason asked.
Nash bit his bottom lip. “It’s the beginning and end of everything.”
“Sounds like mumbo jumbo,” Tyler said.
Nash stepped toward Tyler and examined him as if he were a pet. “And this must be your brother. Jason spoke of you a lot when we served together.”
Tyler seemed surprised at that.
“Mumbo jumbo?” Nash continued. “To those who can’t perceive more than what their five senses tell them, I guess that’s a fitting way of describing it.”
“How were you aware we’d discovered it?” Petit asked him.
“Ah, Professor Petit.” Nash approached him. “As I’d said, the Seekers have been keeping a constant eye on this region of space for quite some time. We’ve also been listening. We were naturally curious with a commlink sent to Earth regarding the discovery of an object beneath the surface of Orion V.”
“But those communications were encrypted.”
“Your codes are child’s play for us.” He chuckled. “You’re now wondering why we didn’t attack immediately after we found you?”
“It’s because you needed more than the sphere.” He pointed to the container. “You needed that as well.”
“You aren’t known as the foremost human mind for nothing, are you, Professor?” Nash moved on to Captain Marquez. “I am sorry we had to destroy your ship in the process.”
Marquez’s hands clenched together. “Did you have to kill so many people for this?”
Nash shook his head. “Understand when I tell you we didn’t want it to be this way. To the Seekers, humans are very much inferior. We have no gripe with your species. The bombardment of the facility was to ensure the safest extraction of the sphere. Your ship, well, once it fired upon us, they gave us little choice.”
Jason couldn’t believe what was coming out of his friend’s mouth. It wasn’t the same Christian Nash he knew. What had these so-called Seekers done to him? He wondered whether it might be Stockholm Syndrome.
“Now it’s time that we come to
the final act.” Nash walked over to the other side of the container and peered inside it.
”And you’ve begun the thawing process already. That should speed things along nicely.”
He pressed at what appeared to be a small terminal. The container opened fully, and everyone stepped back as a cold mist escaped from it.
A cryogenic chamber?
“The genetic key?” Jason overheard Marquez say to Petit.
A hand rose out first and took hold of the side of the container. The skin was almost golden brown, with slight scaling. But it was the hand with six fingers that got Jason’s attention.
Nash helped the body from the chamber while it finished waking from its long sleep. He was hairless. His eyes were slightly bigger, his ears slightly smaller, and his limbs slightly longer. He stood at nearly seven feet tall dressed in nondescript black coveralls. His eyes opened, and he stared around in shock.
Nash gazed upon him with wonder. “Hello, Kione.”
The being’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?” he said in perfect English.
He wasn’t a little green man, a tall gray, or any of the other aliens Jason had seen in all the movies he’d watched as a kid. But nonetheless, there he stood. An extraterrestrial.
Jason began to piece together the puzzle. Doctor Tyrell worked with this being, and for whatever reason wanted to release the information to the public, which any government of their day would be wary to do. So, when the war ended, they simply put him on the taskforce’s kill list to keep him quiet.
“I believe I asked a question?” Kione reiterated.
“Remarkable. You have no idea how important you are to us.” Nash nodded to a pair of his soldiers. “Take him.”
The soldiers clutched the alien by each shoulder and dragged him toward the sphere while Nash instructed some of his other cronies to coral Jason and the others to the far side of the antechamber.
Once they were herded over to one of the large rock formations, Marquez stared across at Jason. “How do you know that man? Nash, did you call him?”
“Out of all the questions you could ask, you ask that one?”
“We have to start somewhere.”
Jason guessed it was as good an answer as any. “He’s Lieutenant Christian Nash. Or at least he was.”
“Nash?” The captain furrowed his brow. “Of the Raptor? The Nebula TPA-338 incident?”
Jason nodded.
“That’s where I know your name from. You were on board the Raptor.”
“That’s right.”
“I recall hearing about your departure from the service after the war.”
“Yes, well, that’s not really pertinent at the moment.”
“You’re right,” Marquez said. “What is pertinent is that Lieutenant Nash should be dead. And he’s not.”
The soldiers held Kione before the sphere and after a few moments, he fell to his knees and clutched his head in agony. He let out a scream and raised his hands in the air, his twelve fingers spreading outward.
The sphere made a loud thumping sound and the pictographs glowed bright orange. A square section of metal liquified, and a long horizontal aperture appeared.
“It seems you were correct, Professor,” Marquez said to Petit.
The professor frowned. “I wish I hadn’t been.”
Nash stood by the opening and peered inside in a focused astonishment. He instructed his soldiers to pick Kione up. They did as they were told and followed his old friend inside.
Jason could only imagine what lay on the other side.
Twenty-Four
The mysterious soldiers stood there as if statues watching over the group with their weapons trained on them.
“What do you think they look like under those helmets?” Tai thought out loud.
“Well, we can rule out three heads and tentacles,” Jason assumed.
“Three heads and tentacles?” Tyler eyed Jason crookedly. “Invasion of the Octopus Men?”
“I loved that movie.”
“Do you really think this is the time?” Tai said to them.
“You don’t want to talk about favorite films? Fine,” Jason said. “You didn’t bring Hungry Hungry Hippo with you by any chance?”
Marquez steered the discussion toward something not so childish. “How long has our government known about the existence of extraterrestrials, Susan?”
The doctor struggled to look away from the opening of the sphere. “A little over thirty years. He was discovered as an infant in orbit of a moon in the Galilei System.”
Jason wondered how subsequent governments could cover up something of such magnitude for so long. Humans had looked into the sky for millennia pondering whether they were alone in the universe. If it weren’t for their predicament, he’d obviously appreciate the significance a little more.
“And you left the service to oversee the study of this being?” Marquez almost appeared betrayed. “What did you know about Doctor Tyrell?”
“Only that he was my predecessor. He was attempting to release all the information on Kione to the public. Or so I’d been told.”
Many assumed Tyrell was the one responsible for Nash’s death. Jason wanted nothing more than to dole out the justice he deserved. But now everything had been turned on its head. He was glad the man had got away. While all these questions about Kione were fascinating, his only thoughts were of his friend. He was of course happy that he was alive, but at the same time he couldn’t help but wonder whether it was the same Christian Nash who’d died in the nebula that day.
Everyone stopped and turned to the sphere as it wailed a metallic, high-pitched scream. They covered their ears, and Nash strolled out. The soldiers followed, dragging a unconscious Kione along with them. The door sealed itself shut, and the wailing turned into a loud humming.
“What’s it doing?” Tyler yelled over the cacophony.
As if to answer his question, the sphere rose into the air. The rock beneath shattered from the vibration, and it broke free. Everyone stepped backward as it ascended toward the antechamber’s ceiling.
But instead of colliding, the sphere moved through the rock, as if it were a hologram dissipating through a solid object. Jason assumed whatever Nash had done inside the sphere, with Kione’s help, it now had new instructions. He imagined once it’d risen to the surface, it would be taken aboard his ship.
Moments later, the sphere had completely disappeared, and Nash approached the group. “Well, it’s been good catching up with you, Jason.” The insincerity was glaring. “Unfortunately, reunions aren’t meant to last forever.”
“What about Kione?” Tai asked, watching him get dragged from the antechamber into the outer tunnel.
“Kione?” Nash glanced over at him. “Well, we still have lots of work for him to do.”
Jason put a hand on Nash’s shoulder and a soldier aimed his gun barrel in Jason’s face. Nash waved the weapon away.
“You don’t have to go with them,” Jason said.
“I belong with the Seekers now.” Nash smiled. “There’s nothing left here for me anymore.”
“Goddamn it, Nash, you belong with us.”
His friend shook his head. “You just don’t get it.”
“Then make me understand.”
“Sometimes you can’t know it all.” Nash shrugged off Jason’s hand and walked away.
Jason tried to break through the soldiers to stop him, but they shoved him to the ground with their weapons.
“No!” Nash commanded. “Hold your fire!”
The soldiers held back, and Nash let Jason up.
“I’m sorry,” Jason said to him.
“Sorry?” Nash looked at him, bemused. “For what?”
“I should’ve been the one to go on that mission. I should be standing where you are now.”
Nash chuckled wryly and marched toward the antechamber exit. “Goodbye, Cassidy.”
He followed the last of the soldiers out, and Jason watched him disappear again. “Sea
l them in!”
The soldiers aimed their weapons high above the entrance and fired. The ceiling rumbled, and rock came tumbling down. Just as it began six million years ago, the antechamber had once again become a tomb.
A dead end. Typical.
Conrad Althaus had hiked five hundred meters into another dark tunnel and once again found no other escape to the surface. He stopped and hunched over to grab his right knee. He struggled to remember the last time he’d done so much walking. Even in the Argo’s cargo hold, he had machinery to help with his job. He’d refused to believe it, but at times like this, he knew he wasn’t a young man anymore.
He got up and turned around, making his way back to the worksite. In the distance the sound of marching feet echoed. Moving as close to the side of the tunnel wall as he could, he continued to creep toward the worksite entrance. He stopped and took cover behind a large stalagmite.
Peeking around the corner, he surveyed the soldiers, with strange-looking rifles hanging down their arms. They were all dressed in black, their heads shielded by equally dark helmets. At least half a dozen stood guard at the top of the elevator.
I told you not to go down there.
He thought of Tyler. Since Jason had returned, he’d been nothing but a bad influence on him. Now, he’d probably got him killed.
Conrad crept farther up and crouched behind a smaller rock formation. The soldiers hadn’t spotted him, so he took his chance and crawled toward the giant excavator between him and them. He jumped behind the machine’s large bucket just as one of the soldier’s heads turned.
Sweat drenched his brow. He waited a few moments before looking back toward them. They hadn’t moved. He was in the clear.
Now what the hell am I going to do?
If he stayed out of sight, he could get away scot-free and return to the Argo without a scratch. But then that wouldn’t help Tyler.
Before he could come up with any semblance of a plan, a humming noise got steadily louder. He poked his head around the excavator’s bucket as the elevator car returned to the top of the shaft. Whoever had gone down were on their way up.
More soldiers came out followed by one who wasn’t wearing a helmet. It was a man. His gaze drifted when he spotted something even stranger. A tall being of some description carried by a pair of the soldiers. It wasn’t a human. His features were all wrong.
Frontier's Reach: A Space Opera Adventure (Frontiers Book 1) Page 12
